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SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 



SKETCHES 
OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

WHOLE CLOTH AND PATCHES 



BY 

JOHN VARNEY 



NICHOLAS L. BROWN 

NEW YORK MCMXX 



Copyright, 1920 



NICHOLAS L. BROWN^ 



i^:4 



r\ 



A II Bights Reserved 

■M 30 1920 
g)Ci.A605193 



TO RANDOLPH BOURNE 

Brave American, 

Lover of our country! 

Throbbing with its best and developed traditions of 

liberty ; 
Carrying liberty's torch to the innermost recesses of the 

caverns of selfhood, 
And discovering in advance of thy kinsmen 
The secrets of the free society of the future; 
We salute thee now ! 

You saw with quick and bated emotion 

The faint light of the first beacon signal 

For a new fight for freedom — for freedom too pure to 
bear adj ective dilutions — 

On that hill far away, 

WJiere thy frail body could hardly carry thee. 

But where thy mind and all thy quick pure spirit rushed 
to be; 

In the land of hope and regeneration — 

Russia, the despised; hated for its youth 

By all the old tyrants, Things-as-They-Are ; 

As, in a measure — calling thee small and un- 
American — 

They hated and hounded thee — 

Even to thy Death! 



CONTENTS 

PART ONE: PATCHES 

Introductory, 11 

SterilitYj 17 

Entering a New Russia, 25 

Kazan: Summer of 1918, 36 

Wood Flame: 

An Imaginary Story of the Volga River, 43 

Counter-Revolution, 68 

Smashing the Lines: 

An Account, Largely Imaginary, of Bi-organization 
Activity, 85 

Sunless Kola, 101 

John Bull in North Russia, 119 

What the Allies Accomplished in North Russia, 126 

Honey Lou: 

An Imaginary Adventure Among the Lapps, 133 

Russian New-mindedness, 152 

Tavarish: a Poem, 165 

PART TWO: WHOLE CLOTH 

Whole Cloth: 

A Dialogue on Political Realism, 171 



INTRODUCTORY 



INTRODUCTORY 

In this book are collected stray writings based 
upon experiences of the author in Russia from April, 
1918, to March, 19/19. Experiences of a common 
American in very ordinary service with the Y. M. C. 
A. ; Russia, however, being what she was at that time, 
they were uncommon experiences. 

If no central thread appears at first in these nar- 
ratives, the incompleteness and inchoateness of the 
phenomena observed by the author must be the ex- 
cuse. Although he cannot dogmatize about Russia, 
he can suggest ; and so far as the suggestive and im- 
pressionistic method is of value, definite images and 
ideas may emerge for the reader from the writer's 
piece-meal sketches, when taken together. 

The dialogue. Whole Cloth, was written in its first 
draft and with most of its array of ideas, in Sweden 
and Norway during September and October, 1918, 
before the armistice, when the writer was traveling 
from Soviet parts into anti-Soviet parts of Russia. 
This fact accounts for a certain war-time flavor in it. 
The short pieces, or patches, have been written at 
different periods from the time the writer first ar- 
rived in Russia to the present day. 

While the dialogue and three of the short sketches. 
Wood Flame, Smashing the Lines, and Honey Lou, 
are based upon actual experiences, their characters 

11 



12 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

are imaginary and do not express, specifically, the 
ideas of the writer or of other persons. 

The title, Sketches of Soviet Russia, may seem non- 
inclusive to those who believe that the anti-Soviet 
governments of Murmansk and Archangel were a 
serious menace to the propagation and development 
of the Soviet principle in Russia. The writer be- 
lieves that the unfortunate intervention of the Allies 
in North Russia only helped the Soviet principle to 
grow to harvest time ; that the governments they set 
up were just anti-Soviet; negative, colorless, un- 
principled — only a phase of the constructive, active 
force of Sovietism. 

Since the various sketches of this book are in the 
nature of excerpts from a literary diary, it may not 
be out of place for the author to explain so much of 
himself as will account for the war-time prejudices 
with which he entered upon his days in Russia. Ac- 
cordingly, a review of the writer's American diary 
for the few months preceding his departure for Rus- 
sia is given in a few pages immediately following. 

In a special margined wide column of the Boston 
Herald of April 3, 1917, I read President Wilson's 
Call to War with Germany. The crisp, moral-heavy 
passages dug deep into my feelings. I had been 
pretty strong against this war on an instinct. But 
that trenchant morning I discovered I was no Paci- 
fist. Wilson said something within that wide mar- 
gin about America and Americans that touched ex- 
plosive matter way down. I finally became moved to 
a point almost to enlist that very morning. Law 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

School was just a library of decisions for dead men 
on dead causes ; War — of that wide-margined sort 
— was law-giving of the Mosaic sort, being brought 
down from God Himself I So deep consciousness of 
country, hymn-emotion, and Mosaic Wilson had their 
spell over me. My friends and fellow students at 
law school fell under a similar spell, I suppose — 
but whether it was just such a spell, I cannot be 
positive — and their instinct led them to enlist at 
once, that is, to go at once to a training camp for 
officers. As that day wore on, my own old inform- 
ing instinct prevailed : I did not enlist. 

On the day war was declared. Professor Wam- 
baugh at the end of his lecture referred with tears 
in his eyes to Lincoln's call for volunteers in '61. 
I conceded the professor's right to draw the analogy, 
and I conceded that, in falling subject to the spell 
of his warm words, the students paid a tribute to 
those noble strains in all of us, way down, that can 
always be appealed to on occasion; but, as for my- 
self, I remained outside the range of the spell; the 
sudden abatement of that first rise of the war fever 
in me after impact with Wilson's fine words, left me 
for month after month uninfected by the war en- 
thusiasm of my fellow Americans about me. 

That swift judgment on the library of decisions 
for dead men on dead causes, once pronounced, re- 
mained binding ; and it was difficult to retain enough 
interest in law lectures to insure the passing of the 
June examinations. The problems of the war and 
of patriotism, taking daily new angles, puzzled my 



14 SKETCHES OE SOVIET RUSSIA 

mind probably more in Cambridge than they would 
have done had I gone to a camp — done something. 
But why dodge the intellectual problems of the war? 
They would have to be faced sometime, if I was to 
keep respect for my own mind. The obstinacy of 
my mind, however, did not lead me out on any bright 
and shining clear path; it did not lead me to any 
ifield of martyrdom. To evade the draft law in any 
fashion, never seriously entered my head. The posi- 
tion of the conscientious objector against all war 
seemed as unreal as the position of the mass of the 
people toward this war to end war. Neither was 
the growth of my dissenting opinions about the war 
accompanied by the zest of reality; the pragmatic 
value of these opinions was doubtful ; they were like 
unstated faiths — faiths too new to have any lan- 
guage by which they could pass current among the 
believers of them ; they could not be propagated ; the 
oflBcers of government needed to have no fear that 
war-faiths in such a crude state of development as 
mine were, could be preached. 

For us who were such isolated believers, set adrift 
in an uncharted sea, one spokesman, Randolph 
Bourne, was then writing, straight out with a con- 
viction of right and of correct patriotism, in the 
Seven Arts Magazine of blessed memory. Soon this 
magazine had to disappear; it was the last light to 
go out — leaving darkness to reign — except for 
the phosphorescent New Repwhlic. 

With the progress of darkness here, was con- 
trasted the progress of light on another shore — in 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

Russia. Adrift on the uncharted sea — I was 
driven by strong instinct to the light. The only ship 
I could find to carry me thither was one sent by the 
Y. M. C. A. I may be thought a hypocrite to have 
sailed under Y. M. C. A. colors, but certainly I was 
less a hypocrite to go to Russia for the Y. M. C. A. 
than to go to France for the Y. M, C. A. I was still 
less a hypocrite than to have waited in America in 
my slough of despair until in the course of events 
conscripted for a clerkship in Washington; that 
would have been a sort of martyrdom ! 

The banners of the Proletariat had just been 
raised in Russia. What did that mean? In think- 
ing about what that might mean, zest once more 
took up her residence in my mind; Russia might 
bring me into reality again. Whether it did or not, 
you, reader, must judge from the assorted interpreta- 
tions of Russia in the following pages. At least 
from this preface you will learn the state of mind 
of the author when he left America to go there. As 
further evidence of his state of mind, as illustration 
of a documentary sort, he appends the major part 
of an article, entitled " Sterility," written by him in 
September, 1917. 

In a note to the heads of all belligerent peoples, on 
August 1, 1917, the Pope made several concrete sug- 
gestions for peace : The simultaneous and reciprocal 
diminution of armaments ; the recognition of the true 
liberty and community of the seas ; the settlement 
of territorial questions by all parties in a concilia- 
tory spirit. On August 27th, President Wilson re- 



16 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

plying to the Pope's note declared that any parley 
with the ambitious and intriguing rulers of Germany 
could lead to no peace based on the faith of all the 
peoples involved. There was included a statement 
that " punitive damages, the dismemberment of em- 
pires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive eco- 
nomic leagues, we deem inexpedient." And curiously 
it was argued that to follow the Pope's plan would, 
by strengthening the German Government, result in 
abandoning new-born Russia to certain counter revo- 
lution. 

This little article " Sterility," with the President's 
reply to the Pope as a text, sets forth some of the 
observations of the author on the complexion of 
American war-thought of a given week. The article 
betrays the formation of vaguely-felt, yet confident, 
heterodox opinion. It is printed so that it may 
conveniently be skipped by the orthodox and by those 
impatient with groping, tentative opinion. 

July, 1920. 



STERILITY 

The President's reply to the Pope's peace note is a 
ringing, definite utterance. With the crashing of war 
thunder and the flashing of merciful lightning a Jove 
speaks. One man among the welter of an apparently 
individual-less world-mob, Mr. Wilson, has seen the 
light. Moses has come down out of Sinai. To judg- 
ment in the court of the nations, at last has come a 
Daniel. The Central Powers are declared the guilty 
party. The Allies shall have their pound of flesh. 
But, of course, they will be generous. France will not 
take Alsace-Lorraine, Italy will not take the half-Italian 
cities on the Adriatic, England will give up her two- 
power naval standard and accept Germany as an equal. 
But that the Central Empires will not be dismembered 
is only by grace of a mercy that tempers judgment. 
The Allies must nominally have the pound of flesh. 
That is the law. That is right. That is just. 

To the President the question of innocence and of guilt 
is of colossal simplicity; to certain other Americans it 
has seemed, and still seems, infinitely complex. To the 
President the issue is moral; to these other Americans 
there is no grand issue; rather we witness, it appears to 
them, the pitting of great non-indivadual, evolutionary 
forces over against one another. The moralist, dealing 
with absolutes, finds his intelligence sufficient for the 
day. The evolutionist expects intelligence in dealing 
with the present events to be sufficient only in the 
studies of the best historical minds of the years to come. 
The note harks back to the first principles of state- 
ments made by the Allied governments at the time, con- 
siderably less than a year ago, when Wilson requested 

17 



18 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the peace terms of all belligerents. The French said 
that Wilson in making that request was a foolish idealist. 
English comment was : " What can America have to 
say when the issues have been so clearly defined by the 
various Premiers of the Entente Powers } " Mr. Wil- 
son had called the attention of the warring statesmen to 
the fact that on each side they professed the same 
objects: desired to make secure the rights of weak 
states and to provide against the recurrence of wars like 
the present one. The irritation of the Allies — namely 
the irritation of London and Paris — at this, had its 
vent in the formal reply by the Entente, which intimated 
that Wilson had made an assimilation between the two 
groups of belligerents ; " this assimilation, based upon 
public declarations by the Central Powers, is," the 
formal reply read, " in direct opposition to the evidence, 
both as regards responsibility for the past, and as con- 
cerns guarantees for the future." The Entente was in 
this way acting as judge of the evidence in its own 
case. In the reply to the Pope, the President brushes 
aside the question of evidence, altogether. The wicked- 
ness of the Central Powers is held to be self-evident. 
So nations in the past have always judged the evidence 
of national culpability. All is fair in war, so they have 
said. Then why is there in this war an attempt of each 
party to make out a case for itself? Because the pres- 
sure of the present cataclysm is forcing the thinking men 
of every nation to utter something, even though that 
something partakes, in its general tenor, of the nature 
of the old irrationalities. The utterance of the Presi- 
dent does so partake, we fear. 

The New York Times reports, as reported, that there 
are " circles of opinion abroad in which the President 
is regarded as more firmly set on the continuance of the 
war than any other national leader, in consequence of 
his reply to the Pope." Certainly his words must 
greatly please the imperialistic! sections of the Entente. 



STERILITY 19 

The Manchester Guardian and what may be termed the 
right wing of English Radicals, seem greatly pleased 
with that part of the Wilson document dealing with 
" punitive damages " ; " dismemberment of empires " ; 
" establishment of selfish and exclusive economic 
leagues." While, then, the imperialists applaud the 
document because they shrewdly estimate that the effect 
of such a peace-technique is to prolong the war till the 
knock-out blow, the English liberals applaud the splen- 
did paragraph of ideals. This paragraph links this last 
note to the earlier Wilson notes. 

The boldness of the Presidential Bull against exclusive 
economic leagues is a stroke. It is the progressive part 
of this particular Wilson document and future reference 
may for this reason set it apart from the other papers. 

When the President last December (1916) asked the 
belligerents to state their terms of peace, his note had a 
queer dash — something like innuendo. He spoke of 
us as a neutral nation " whose interests have been most 
seriously affected by the war and whose concern for its 
conclusion arises out of a manifest necessity to determine 
how best to safeguard those interests if the war is to 
continue." Mr. Lansing, the President's Secretary of 
State, issued the following statement the next day: " We 
are drawing nearer the verge of war and therefore are 
entitled to know what each belligerent seeks, in order 
that we may regulate our conduct in the future." This 
interpretation of the President's ambiguity didn't quite 
reflect the executive mind and was, therefore, the same 
day amended The final presidential pronouncement was 
that we were not contemplating war. Probably we were 
not. The " we " as expressed in the national election, 
one month previous, certainly was not contemplating 
war. 

So now, again, on occasion of the reply to the Pope, 
one in aiithority, as the Associated Press puts it, lias 
broken the force of the President's words regarding 



20 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

exclusive economic leagues. The President was not re- 
ferring thus to the Paris Inter-Allied Economic Confer- 
ence, but to aggressive economic leagues that would be 
made necessary if the Pope's plan were acted upon. 
In commenting upon tliis part of the paper the Paris 
papers reached harmony with Mr. Wilson by contending 
that the economic league proposed by the Paris confer- 
ence was for defense only. 

So the merry game of logomachy in our thinking and 
of reality in our warfare continues. W:e grow not more 
powerful but more powerless, it seems, to say the magic 
word that will recall the inhuman forces of carnage 
let loose by awkward, second-rate world-rulers. This 
impotency of those in high authority to deal with the 
horror of the present actuality the President has him- 
self stated well in the first of his international notes: 
" If the contest must continue to proceed toward unde- 
fined ends by slow attrition until the one group of 
belligerents or the other is exhausted; if millions after 
millions of human lives must continue to be offered up 
until on the one side or the other there are no more to 
offer; if resentments must be kindled that can never cool 
and despairs engendered from which there can be no 
recovery, hopes of peace and of willing concert of free 
peoples will be rendered vain and idle." 

" That only person in high authority amongst all the 
peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak out and 
hold nothing back " is not only no longer uniquely " at 
liberty," but he now appears the one of the Allied 
Premiers most inclined to sit tight till JDer Tag. The 
logic of a Peace without Victory was for another day. 

Whatever the value of some of Mr. Wilson's theories, 
the effect of this papal reply to the Pope is to prolong 
the war. There can be no parley with the Great Cause 
of the war is its argum^ent; there may be parley only, 
and perhaps, with the innocent German people. Does 
the President count on a German revolution at the end? 



STERILITY 21 

Has the weather-cock swung at last to this — a war for 
German freedom? Is The Day for which we must wait, 
the day when the shackles of the German people are 
unloosed? We were fighting to make the world safe for 
democracy. More specifically we began by fighting for 
American rights of neutrality on the seas; we end in 
fighting for nothing specific at all. We embrace the 
cause of all causes which are anti-Middle-Europe: the 
cause of British South Africa, Irredentism, defensive ( ?) 
economic leagues, restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. Yet 
all these things were being fought for a year ago when 
the candidate who was in favor of being too proud to 
fight won his campaign. 

May we not almost reach the conclusion that the 
reigning statesmen of the war are too old in years and 
too old in technique to create platforms that shall be 
international ! Verily, it is no more difficult for a camel 
to go through a needle's eye than for a nationalist states- 
man to conceive of an internationalist peace. Ribot has 
spoken. Michaelis has spoken. Lloyd-George, Balfour, 
and Sir Edward Carson have spoken. Wilson has writ- 
ten. To what effect — all ? 

During his five years of national leadership Woodrow 
Wilson has well written much that has become a fund 
for sound thinking on political topics ; he has, for ex- 
ample, lifted the idea of a League to Enforce Peace 
from the level of a society of illuminati to the forum of 
world discussion. ]\Ioreover, he has achieved large, 
progressive measures in the times of peace : the President 
piped and Congress danced. And in the six months of 
war he has shown a masterful hand in effecting, in the 
face of a contentious legislative body, stupendous organ- 
ization for war. We may say we hope that his reply to 
the Pope may be fruitful in bringing lasting peace. 
That it has found Vorwaerts, the German Socialist 
newspaper, not unreceptive, proves it not entirely inef- 
fective in its aim; though Vorwaerts complains that it 



22 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

does not find in the note that spirit of friendliness to 
the German people which might have been furnished 
by a plain statement that the German people should not 
have to suffer at the hands of its enemies. To this com- 
plaint an inadequate answer might readily be framed: 
that Mr. Wilson had to speak in general terms in his 
note in order not to tread on the toes of his confederates. 
Though trusting blindly that in some way this last 
work of Mr. Wilson will advance real peace, we must, 
on the whole, confess to a keen disappointment. We had 
hoped the commanding representative of our new world 
would show a grasp of new strange principles. We had 
hoped that when we heard his voice again, it might give 
us a thrill for the encountering of new-found adjust- 
ments — such a thrill as we experienced on the morn- 
ings when the new burning of heart in Russia was 
heralded. Perhaps we are not longer to expect the 
new adaptations to be seen by Mr. Wilson. But surely 
in the tumultuous breaking up of the old order, which 
the present world-pain makes inevitable, some American 
eyes will be powerfully penetrating. 



SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 



ENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 

There was a hidden perturbation of heart and of 
head as we were leaving England in April, 1918, for 
a new country, Russia ! — for a country of strange 
social monsters with uncertain and inaccurately- 
reported habits and disposition. So affected by 
the prospects was I, myself, that that last evening 
we spent in London, I could not laugh at my room- 
mate when he asked me for directions in writing a 
will. 

From Newcastle we steered a zig-zag course 
through submarine territory. German submarines 
were watching for English boats off the North Cape 
at that time, and, in cases, failing to destroy these, 
would, just out of spite, sink little Norwegian fishing 
smacks in the vicinity. To our surprise, we did not 
find it excessively cold in those arctic waters, the 
reason being that we were following the Gulf Stream 
to one of its termini in the neighborhood of Mur- 
mansk. Murmansk was our terminus, a Russian 
port open the year round, located about 200 miles 
east of the Norwegian North Cape, at the inner 
extremity of an indentation of the Kola Peninsula, 
rather difficult to navigate. 

The town of Murmansk, built up with the coming 
25 



26 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

of the railroad just completed, resembled an Amer- 
ican western boom-town or one of the new small 
cities of Siberia. Most of the structures, excepting 
the substantial log government buildings, were low 
log shacks, protected in the winter from the cold 
by moats and banked walls of close-fibered roots and 
tree branches, and by wool stuffed into the cracks 
between the logs. The many^houred sun of the 
northern spring had then — about April 20 — half- 
melted the snow and brought the roads to a very 
muddy and almost impassable condition. The fol- 
lowing winter many Allied troops were quartered in 
Murmansk, and it was feared that with the coming 
of spring an epidemic would break out which would 
over-crowd the new, secluded cemetery on the top of 
the hill ; but, thanks to the special preventive meas- 
ures taken, the soldiers enjoyed excellent health in 
this region summer and winter. 

We were not surprised on landing at Murmansk at 
six o'clock in the evening, to be informed that it was 
after hours of work for the wharf porters and that 
none could be obtained at any price. Prepared for 
something much more resembling an atrocity — even 
pleased at the negligible character of our first Rus- 
sian hardship — we went to work, without grum- 
bling, and carried our assorted baggage, heavy and 
light, with our own arms and hands from the dock- 
side to a freight car four hundred yards distant. 
In those first days of Soviet freedom, workmen often 
made hours to suit themselves and the public was 
damned. 



ENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 27 

Murmansk had for many months been kept full of 
departing missions and refugees. Almost every 
evening a concert was given at the town hall by a 
different set of these talented people, among them 
artistes of the Petrograd and Moscow opera houses. 
Picking their way over the muddy roads and the 
railroad tracks, on which stood their private cars, 
were to be seen many meticulously garbed Erench 
officers. Members of the American Red Cross Unit 
that had been getting out of Roumania through 
Russia for five weeks, gave us a certain initiation 
into the mysteries of the Russia of that time — the 
words which fell from their lips only increased the 
mystery, the inexplicable riddle of Russia to me. At 
the Y. M. C. A., which was the headquarters of the 
Americans in town, we met the American Lieutenant 

P , who became a man of authority to us. Now 

I picked up in this headquarters and read with my 
back to the Russian stove, an amazing book to be 
taken to Russia as American propaganda — Henry 
D. Sedgewick's " The New American Type and Other 

Essays." Lieutenant P was Sedgewick's new 

American type, brisk in movement, shoulders slightly 
stooped, eyes determined and hawk-like, yet question- 
ing ; his ideas originating in a business man's highly- 
concentrated imagination, ingenious, yet quite fixed 
and irrevocable after once taking form. This fellow 
endeavored to communicate to us his enthusiasm for 
a plan to land several thousand American troops at 
Murmansk ; " They would become a nucleus " — he 
proved to us, like a preacher, gesticulating — " for 



28 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

a horde of eager Russians, waiting for an oppor- 
tunity to fight the Soviets." 

Murmansk's was our first Soviet. No red tape 
there ! No questions, no customs, for us ! The 
committee in control of local affairs were two sailors 
and a fireman, all from one of the unmanned Russian 
warships lying idle in the harbor. Two of this 
Soviet (committee) had lived in America for a num- 
ber of years, and were especially friendly to Amer- 
icans. Halsey, the Y. M. C. A. man, said their 
administration of affairs was not so bad as it might 
be. The bread, all purchased by permit at the 
public bakery, was cheap ; the flour came from Eng- 
land. All the workmen were required to attend 
night-school — an instance of their new freedom ! 

We were deluged at once, of course, with many 
wild and miraculous tales of " progressive " Russia. 
The country was rife with rumors and conjectures. 
And it seemed to me, anything might happen in such 
a jumping-off place of civilization. Among other 
tales, was one most pertinent to us, that a train of 
refugees coming to Murmansk was held up by its 
engineer till given a bonus by the passengers. We 
were more inclined to believe this story when our own 
engineer refused to move his train. We were told he 
refused because the train crew was not given enough 
food. If true, just cause ! Passengers were very 
careful to carry enough food for all emergencies. 
Why should not those who " worked their passage " 
be also insured against starvation? So here was a 
story neither picturesque nor picaresque. Whatever 



CENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 29 

adjustment was made between " labor " and " labor," 
the train ambled on its way the next morning, only 
twelve hours late. 

This railroad connecting Murmansk with Petro- 
grad had only been completed during the war. The 
Russian government had realized the tremendous ad- 
vantages of Murmansk as a port open the year round 
for trade with England and America — especially at 
a time when the war made other Russian ports inac- 
cessible. American contractors were intrusted with 
the undertaking, and at once one thousand men 
were employed, mostly Chinese coolies, work being 
begun at both ends simultaneously. The difficulties 
were great: the lack of population, the swampy na- 
ture of the ground, the distance from supplies. 
The climate was severe for the Asiatic workmen and 
hundreds of them died of the scurvy, a disease to 
which people living in that arctic country are sus- 
ceptible. When the English occupied this region, 
their soldiers were ordered to drink lime juice as a 
preventive against this disease. I remember one 
pitiable Russian, an exile from the Southland, whom 
I saw afflicted with scurvy, and dying a slow death. 
I had to tell him there was no way for him to cross 
the lines and reach his home — that was during the 
time of the military intervention — as he very much 
wished to do. He had contracted the disease from 
under-nourishment. 

The railroad runs from Murmansk to Kandalak- 
sha, at the northernmost comer of the White Sea; 
to Soroka at the southwest corner ; to Petrozavodsk, 



30 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

•>. 
a town of 10,000 ; and to 'Tfvanka, south of Lake 
Ladoga, connecting at the l^atter place with a previ- 
ously existing line to Petrograd. The length of the 
whole line is 650 miles, built standard-gauge, and 
eventually to be double-tracked. 

This road was not completed in time to be of great 
military value during the war, but in times of 
future peace it will develop Russia's exports in 
grain, flax, and dairy products from North Russia. 
Archangel, the old, and only other, port in the north, 
is 400 miles further east, and is blocked up with ice 
half the year. 

So we began our journey down this railroad — 
with destination at an immeasurable distance of both 
time and space — judged by our own feelings ! 

At least we were pretty well insured against star- 
vation. We had with foresight purchased a two- 
weeks' " picnic " ration in London, the ship had given 
every passenger a generous allowance of food, and 
then Halsey had halved his larder with us ; besides 
all this, we wise ones had laid in a secret supply of 
jams and chocolate that was tucked away in the 
corners of our trunks and bags. 

In order to take all our baggage with us, we 
traveled to Moscow in a freight car, hobo-fourth- 
class, or to be precise, in a tepluska, which means in 
Russian : a freight car with a stove in it. There were 
four wide shelves, two on a side, with room in the 
center for the stove and wood. At each upper cor- 
ner was a sliding v\'indow, forty by fifteen inches, and 
in the center were sliding doors on each side. Some 



ENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 31 

of the party thought that others often " hogged " 
the view at these advantageous apertures. Packed 
in such a traveling carriage were eleven Americans, 
an interpreter and two other Russian fellow-officers 
of the old army, together with trunks, duffle-bags, 
bed-rolls, boxes, and suitcases, in such quantity as 
to constitute us plutocrats in that country, no mat- 
ter how unkempt the state of our beards. I was 
assigned to the steerage deck (a lower shelf) along 
with Woody, Beekman, and the Russians. We 
under-dogs slept on two trunks, apiece. In this posi- 
tion of outcast, I found it some reason to be thankful 
that it was on my own trunk that I reposed the half 
of me. To be sure, we were offered a seat occasion- 
ally on the top shelf, even a seat at times near a port- 
hole window, to be accepted, however, in a " by your 
leave" spirit. Till our journey's end and a re- 
assignment of sleeping-places took place, we not on 
the upper shelf remained in our feelings, " steerage 
passengers I " 

The stove kept us warm enough. At night, with 
my head only four feet away from it, it kept me too 
warm. On this stove our meals were irregularly 
cooked, and then distributed in scrupulously just por- 
tions by the cook and his assistant-for-the-meal, to 
each man as he sat in his appointed place. 

We stopped at all the stations, several hours' ride 
apart, for wood and water for the engine. Most of 
the rolling stock of this railroad and the great 
Mallet locomotives, fitted to bum wood, came from 
America. It made one unhappy to see so much 



32 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

precious wood consumed for firing an engine, yef the 
point is that the wood is not precious there. Wood 
is used as fuel on all railroads of North Russia, large 
stocks of wood being piled near the tracks at certain 
stations. The passengers help themselves to this 
wood, also, to replenish the stoves of their teplusJcas. 
There was great competition among the members of 
our party for the pleasure of splitting our wood 
during waits at stations. 

At the stations we all alighted to scurry about; 
some for wood, some to join the line at the KypiatoJc 
(hot-water tank), some just to scurry about. We 
used the hot water for tea, as did the Russians. Tea 
and black bread were all the Russians on the train 
seemed to have to live on. At the large station 
restaurants the Russians in our teplusJca, however, 
bought small delicious native birds and other special 
Russian food which they delighted to talk about and 
share with us. 

The inhabitants of this sparselj^-settled country 
are nearly all employees of the railroad. Many of 
them, especially the young men, evidently flocked to 
the station to see every train come in; there were 
three through trains a week. We saw in the villages 
many of the Chinese who had originally been brought 
there as road-builders. One wondered what place 
they might occupy in the new social regimentation. 
At each station was a group of about fifteen or 
twenty log buildings, all new, and surprisingly well- 
built and neat ; in some places scattered at different 



ENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 33 

elevations in a pine grove, they made a good subject 
for a canvas. 

So were the incisive colors of that country such 
as to arouse the passions of an artist. I never 
wearied of looking out through the half-open door- 
way, or, on rare occasions, through a port-hole win- 
dow, at the landscape: olive-green, straight, slender 
pines, of man-size only at the Murmansk end; shin- 
ing, white mountains; long white lakes that, even 
then, nearly May, were still being used as high roads 
of ice ; sunset colors fading only a brief time before 
the first light of very early dawn. 

Near Kandalaksha, it was, I think, that we had 
to wait a whole night in the fear that if we pro- 
ceeded we might be attacked by Finnish bands, 
directed by Germans who hoped to break communi- 
cations along this road. 

At Petrozavodsk we had a delay of six hours which 
nearly aU the Americans improved for a visit to our 
first town of any size. Returning from this inspec- 
tion with Bonta, I recall standing on an eminence 
overlooking the town and the spreading Lake Onega. 
Dominating everything was the pinnacle of the big 
church, glittering green in the soft early-afternoon 
sunlight, a symbol of Russian community life for 
centuries. It has been the materials of the one 
church, whether of wood or of brick, or where more 
than one, the nimiber of churches, that has deter- 
mined the classification of a Russian habitation as 
celo, volost, or gorod. The church has stood for 



34 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the life of the people-together. Now, since the revo- 
lution, this Russian people-together had taken great 
steps. The country over-night had become socialist. 
We had been traveling hundreds of miles in a coun- 
try where, as a fact, land, buildings, and railroads, 
all were common wealth. Yet, undoubtedly, busi- 
ness was being carried on. Up there in the latitude 
of Alaska we were being carried across swamps and 
virgin wild country; in places the train just crawled 
as it passed over crooked stretches which even then 
were being made straight; a great deal was being 
done to raise and straighten the road-bed: somebody 
was working. We were proceeding on our journey; 
small matter the delays ! Now the question upper- 
most in my mind was how social life was moving in 
Russia. Who and what was the new regime.'' Was 
it representative of the people-together, the people 
symbolized in the Petrozavodsk church tower, or was 
it representative only of a part of the people- 
together? Here was the problem with which Russia 
confronted me ! 

In Moscow, where we arrived after an exciting six 
days' journey, that problem became at once acute. 
We found the city gayly decorated for a May First 
celebration held the day before. I inquired about 
this celebration. " They had had the biggest parade 
the city ever saw," I was informed, " but the enthusi- 
asm wasn't genuine; the people aren't really with 
the Bolsheviks ; the Bolsheviks had to force citizens 
to join this parade; there isn't the enthusiasm about 
the revolution there was at first ; the people are tired 



ENTERING A NEW RUSSIA 35 

of revolution; they want bread." Hearing such an 
interpretation of the Russian dictatorship of the 
proletariat, I began to speculate about the growth 
of minority movements in history. Granted Bolshe- 
vism was a minority movement, had it struck a 
policy and uttered a battle cry that would draw the 
masses to its support ultimately? Were the Bol- 
shevik leaders seers, or were they only blind leaders 
of the blind? 

The next day I decided they were blind leaders. 
I could not go about to see the sights of the city 
because all the tram-car workers had declared the 
church holiday was to be a complete holiday for 
themselves as well as for the rest of the citizenry. 
This big, glaring instance of personal discomfort for 
me, made me for that day impatient with the dicta- 
torship of the proletariat. But that particular sort 
of independence on the part of the tram-car em- 
ployees did not annoy the citizens of Moscow again; 
for the workers, not tram-car employees, were after 
all in a majority, and they saw to it that thereafter 
the tram-car people reckoned with their duty to the 
public as well as with their duty to themselves. In 
witnessing this tram-car stoppage and its lessons for 
the citizens, I was compelled to realize that I was 
in a country of primitive things, where first-starts 
and their failures were to discipline a people most 
roughly. I gained a belief, too, that the social move- 
ment at work in Russia was to involve the whole 
people, and that, before it ceased, it was to express 
the whole people. 



KAZAN: SUMMER OF 1918 

It was May 5th, 1918. As the big Volga steam- 
ship came to a standstill, Woody and I argued where 
we might be; it turned out I was right; we had 
arrived at Kazan. The two of us had a Russian cart- 
load of baggage ; you could not put on one of these 
frail Russian carts more than one horse could carry. 
We rode ourselves on top of the trunks and bags 
three miles, from the preestin (wharves) to the city, 
which we could see all the while with its walled Krem- 
lin at the top gleaming in the sun. Kazan is a city 
of three hundred thousand inliabitants, the capital of 
a fertile province of the same name, and one of 
Russia's important cities commercially; yet there is 
no modern method of moving freight from the river 
to its business section. 

Kazan was captured from the Tartars in 1552 by 
Ivan the Terrible. The Tartar folks have remained 
in the city, comprising now probably one-third of 
its total population. In the Kremlin stands a high 
tower built in the Tartar style, from which the 
Mohammedan crescent was removed for a Russian 
cross when the city changed hands. At the time the 
Bolsheviks came into power, in order to symbolize 
the participation of all elements of the population 
equally in the government, including even the subju- 
gated dark folks, the Tartar Mongolians, the Bol- 

36 



KAZAN: SUMMER OF 1918 37 

sheviks removed the Russian cross from this ancient 
tower and restored the Mohammedan crescent. I 
was told this story of the tower by one of the en- 
raged Russian bourgeoisie. It is easy to distinguish 
the Tartars by their Mongolian features ; invariably, 
too, the men wear black turban hats. I often visited 
the Tartar markets, crowded together in the Tartar 
section of the city, and admired their laces, scarves, 
caps and shoes, justly renowned for beauty and fine 
workmanship. 

In the Kremlin, the heart of the city for centuries, 
are the treasure-houses of its history. Parts of the 
ancient fortress wall were pointed out to me. My 
Russian friend who became my guide there had a 
mind with an ecclesiastical bent. He informed me 
how the earliest and most venerated icons of the 
Cathedral Church were brought on foot from Mother 
Moscow with the continuous singing of a band of 
the faithful. He took me to a shrine beside the 
Cathedral Church, a small cell too low for any person 
to stand up straight in, where the first bishop of 
Kazan spent his latter days, refusing to leave it for 
any cause and having bread and water brought to 
him there. For such and such similar sanctities, the 
man was venerated in life and canonized after death. 
In the Kremlin, also, is an old monastery, founded 
by the first bishop, I believe. Its long dormitory 
faces a garden, and has a view over the Volga valley 
for miles, the best view in the city. Here were in- 
tellectual monks, I was informed; a schedule of spe- 
cial public lectures posted in one of their halls showed 



38 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

that, at least, they were interested in current topics 
such as the revolution and socialism. 

Then, our set sight-seeing being concluded for the 
time, we scrambled down the steep, rocky sides of 
the Kremlin, symbol of the city's Past, and were con- 
fronted, incongruously, with — was it symbolical of 
the city's Present? — crowds of Saturday-afternoon 
people — peasants in native dress sprinkled showily 
among them — walking in the mud about the several 
attractions of what they called an Americanski 
Circus : clowns, acrobats, side-shows, fakers, and a 
merry-go-round. The Russians like such fast-and- 
queerly-moving American Things as these, which api- 
peal magically to a kindred savagery in themselves; 
Jack London is another American Thing with such 
an appeal. I was told that an American clown had 
become the great drawing-card at The Circus, one 
of the most popular amusement places of the city. 

The city was modernized in essential ways, in the 
European if not in the American, sense, except that 
there were no sewers. The streets were roughly 
paved, generally with cobble stones. All buildings 
had electricity; telephones were common, although, 
in some parts of the city, unreliable after the revolu- 
tion. The public buildings were of simple lines, 
substantially constructed, and sometimes quite im^ 
posing. The buildings of the National Bank were 
among the finest in all the Russian cities, the most 
notable being that at Nishni Novgorod. The Kazan 
branch of this bank held the gold reserve of the 
Empire, which was moved away to Siberia by the 



KAZAN: SUMMER OF 1918 39 

Czechs when they captured the city. Among the 
best buildings were the high schools, the Technical 
High School, of which the American Y. M. C. A. 
had the use in the evening, and the Commercial 
School. 

Kazan University, the third-oldest in the empire, 
continued its work in spite of political changes, al- 
though its faculty, I was given to understand, were 
chiefly Cadets bitterly hostile to the Bolsheviks. 
The imperial arms had been removed from the top 
of the high columns at the entrance, and the re- 
sources of the institution put at the service of a 
people's branch of the university, A raise in the 
salaries of the professors was voted by the City 
Soviet that summer. 

'Kazan had not been put on food-rations before I 
left in Jul}^, 1918. This part of the country should 
be richly self-sustaining, if the peasants could be 
induced to yield up their produce ; the people of the 
province were expecting, and I understand they had, 
a good harvest that August and September. Prices 
were high except at cooperative and government 
stores, because speculation was quite unrestricted. 
A good deal appeared in the Soviet newspapers about 
the food-profiteers, but means had not been found at 
that time to curb them. Black bread was 25 cents 
a pound, white bread 40 cents, butter $1.40, and 
cheese and honey about the same. Berries in season 
were relatively cheap and plentiful. Fish were easy 
to obtain. At the restaurants one could eat a good 
meat dinner for TO cents, and at the Vegetarian 



40 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Restaurant, the walls of which were adorned with 
photographs and mottoes of Tolstoy, one could 
order a meal of three or four courses for 40 cents. 

The population did not appear to be saddened by 
the war and the revolution, unless one was exclusively 
with the upper classes, who, indeed, for the most part 
gave themselves over freely to lament, and to fear 
worse times. In the shady ill-kept park in the 
center of the city one saw children gather daily for 
supervised games, and every evening one saw there 
well-dressed crowds of young people promenading. 
Admittance to the park was obtained only by paying 
a small fee, whenever a band concert or a booth-fair 
was held there for benefit of some war or charitable 
organization. Mordkin, whom I had last seen danc- 
ing with Pavlowa in " Giselle " at the Boston Opera 
House, appeared twice on his Volga tour at Kazan 
to packed houses and at what seemed prohibitive 
prices. The Moscow Art Theater Company, also on 
tour, gave a finished performance of Gorki's " In the 
Depths " at the big City Theater. In the box op- 
posite ours sat the President of the Kazan Soviet 
with his family and guests. 

I was surprised to find the family with which I 
lived so little airected by the revolution. The owner 
of the house was a famous surgeon, known for his 
charitable cases, and on that account allowed to keep 
the use of all his rooms. My family living down- 
stairs in his house were forced to share their rooms 
with me ; that is, having to take in somebody to 
share their large quarters according to soviet law, 



KAZAN: SUMMER OF 1918 41 

they were glad to have me. Their furniture and 
personal effects, however, were absolutely untouched, 
their meals were better than the 70-cent dinners at 
the restaurants, and, as luxuries, they had a barrel 
of white flour and, secretly, three bottles of wine a 
day. In June they went to live at their datcha 
(villa) in a summer- village about twenty miles away. 
There they could buy fresh vegetables and fish, and 
swim every day in the Volga River. The afternoon 
I spent visiting them, I sat long on the beach, and 
enjoyed watching the vacationists in the water; the 
fishermen mending their interminably long nets on the 
shore; the fast steamers and the slow freight-boats, 
passing ; and the wide Russian landscape, given char- 
acter by the presence of the mighty river. 

My first few nights in the city I heard shooting on 
the streets, but after that witnessed no signs of dis- 
order. Citizens were organized into a guard for 
night-watches. All the automobiles in the city were 
in the use of the local soviet, and never have I seen 
machines driven along the streets so recklessly. The 
ban against beggars had not become a soviet decree 
at that time, and at many of the street comers these 
ancient pests were stationed. Once in the central 
park on my way down-town a troupe of eight beg- 
gars, that looked needy enough, actually beset me 
behind and before, and when I returned up-town later 
I was waylaid by the same band. There was a com- 
mittee against Counter-Revolution as in other cities, 
and I knew of two of its victims, young ex-officers who 
were admittedly plotting the overthrow of the Bol- 



42 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

sheviks. There was an election in the city that sum- 
mer in which the Bolsheviks led the poll, with the 
Left-Social-Revolutionaries second, and Mensheviks 
and Right-Social-Revolutionaries far behind; the 
non-socialist parties received no votes. Non-Bol- 
shevik newspapers sprang up of a night, often openly 
counter-revolutionary or anti-government, but were 
suppressed after one or two issues. 

Conscription for the Red Army began in July. I 
heard how one poor prospective recruit was chased 
into a river. The levy officers debated whether to 
shoot at him as he escaped, but decided on the sug- 
gestion of a passerby to let him go. The day I left 
the city I saw a group of frightened boys about 
twenty years of age being led to army headquarters. 
This sort of violence illustrated the real plight of 
Russia, however peaceful her cities may have seemed 
to a foreign eye on a summer day. Kazan was cap- 
tured by the Czechs and anti-Bolsheviks the first of 
August and recaptured by the Bolsheviks about a 
month later. Very likely my family in the surgeon's 
house lived on calmly through changes of government 
with their barrel of white flour and their three secret 
bottles of wine a day. 



WOOD FLAME 

AN IMAGINARY STORY OF THE 
VOLGA RIVER 

The telegram had at last come through from 
Jaroslav, being forwarded to me from Kazan, where 
I had expected to be all this time ! As the messenger 
handed it to me, even before I had seen Maria Ivan- 
ovna's name on it, I had a conviction that it was 
important. Now a telegram's delay of ten days, 
like this, does not matter so much if it is a business 
telegram, for in these days when there is little busi- 
ness, business may as well move slowly ; but telegrams 
of Maria Ivanovna are the most important of all; 
Maria Ivanovna is the dearest of all my children — 
she grows to be like her mother at thirty! This 
message of hers was : " Come home at once the news- 
papers will explain why." 

I knew what the newspapers had been saying about 
the city of Jaroslav. Since the first reports, when 
the telegram had been dispatched, rumor had multi- 
plied on rumor. I could not be less apprehensive if 
all were verified, for any one rumor or a part of one 
was bad enough. The White Guards had taken the 
town by a conspiracy, these rumors began. Then 

the Red Guards came from the other cities and laid 

43 



44J SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

siege, they took the Volga bridge, they took a section 
of the city. There were bloody battles ; the priests 
defended their bell-towers with mounted guns ; bell- 
towers and priests toppled together; other public 
buildings were destroyed! Then German and Aus- 
trian war-prisoners came as a third party to the 
destruction; some said, a real third-party, seeking 
to capture the city in the name of the Kaiser. Then 
we heard that fires were sweeping the place, that 
only a third was left standing ! Do you wonder that, 
caught in Simbirsk and unable to procure permis- 
sion to go north, I was turned half madman? For 
I am a householder who looks after my property and 
my family. In such a time I should be with my 
property and my family. 

I think this of mine was the last telegram re- 
ceived that month in Simbirsk from the North. An 
hour after the arrival of the telegram there was a 
scattered firing from the guns on the hill; only a 
pretense of defense, and the Red Armiests were leav- 
ing the town precipitately. At the wharves was a 
panic. People tumbling over themselves and their 
baggage in their eagerness to embark. Neverthe- 
less, I was successful in crowding my way into one 
of the first of the departing boats. There was no 
question of the official permissions for departure 
then. The very man who had refused me a permis- 
sion every day for a week past, the debonair young 
Commissar of Foreign Affairs, came on board, himself 
a fugitive, at Undoree, the first stop beyond Sim- 



WOOD FLAME 45 

birsk, and took up a position beside me in third 
class. 

This was the first time I ever traveled third-class. 
My fellow-passengers were a familiar enough sight, 
mostly peasants who had gone down the river to get 
flour and were now returning with all that the law 
would allow. I had known the peasantry since my 
boyhood when I had played with the peasant boys on 
my grandfather's estate: I had had great respect 
for these boys who excelled me in sports ; nevertheless, 
I will admit I secretly half begrudged them their 
liberation from slavery, which had taken place the 
year I was born. 

I had chosen as the most ventilated part of this 
pack of humanity on the lower floor of the big boat, 
the open deck at the stem. Here one was directly 
under the heavens: he received sunlight, starlight, 
and showers as they came. Showers came twice, and 
I was glad of the protection of half the Commissar's 
soldier's overcoat. At night, my pillow, a bag of 
meal, was shared with four other heads. During 
the whole voyage, some one I think was always asleep 
up against that bag of meal. I had come away in 
such a hurry that I had brought no food with me, 
but the Lord provided: as a matter of course, the 
Bolshevik and I became guests at meals of a hearty, 
stout peasant lady, who seemed always to be nursing 
a baby, even when pouring out tea for us. She had 
two other children along with her. The bag of 
meal was hers ; it was her family, the Commissar and 



46 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

I, who were pillow-mates. The Commissar had bread 
and cheese — the best black bread I ever tasted, 
made, he said, by his goreetcJinia. He had other 
good things prepared by this benefactress, among 
which were quantities of sugared cookies ; such a 
rarity in these days ! All these things he drew from 
a little plaid bag, in which he seemed to have every 
necessary article for a month of travehng. 

I don't wonder that his goreetchnia made him 
sugar cookies. He won even my temperate heart 
soon after the boat steamed away from the hillside 
village of Undoree. He was short and thick-set ; 
his cheeks were full ; his lips, large ; his face was un- 
shaven for several days, and his wavy, brown hair 
was uncombed. His eyes were a pale blue and 
dreamy. The whole lower part of his face combined 
with the eyes to give the impression of a care-free, 
light-thoughted son of Adam. He smiled constantly 
as he talked in an engaging, slow, somewhat-husky 
voice. 

In response to the immediate interest I took in 
him, he volunteered his own story. It did not con- 
cern him to know first my political views. He was 
so ingenious about his own, that before our journey 
together was finished, I had confided to him just how 
bitter a counter-revolutionary I really was. His 
name was Nicolai Timofevitch AsakalofF. He was 
Ukrainian, his native city being Kieif. When the 
war broke out he was assistant-engineer running 
locomotives in a Kieff freight-yard. He was com- 
mandeered to run supply trains at the front in 



WOOD FLAME 47 

Poland, and later, out in several directions from 
Minsk. He knew all about locomotives, he said. 
He compared American, German, and Russian en- 
gines : the Russian were the best on the whole. I can 
believe he knows an infinite deal about the locomo- 
tive, or will know. He would have continued the 
subject all night I suppose but for the intei-^^ention 
of the nursing peasant — I was less interested in 
engines than he thought, but so eager was his man- 
ner of conversation that I could have enjoyed it if 
he had chosen a topic even more indifferent — he 
talked with his whole body expressively. 

The peasant-mother intervened to invite us to tea. 
I had just watched her, as she went for hot water 
with a battered tin kettle, wriggle her way through 
groups standing and groups sitting to the hypiatoh 
in the dark bowels of the boat; there was no other 
passage-way than the one she made for herself, in 
that seething crowd of fellow-travelers. During her 
absence the young Commissar had held her baby with 
one hand, with the other gesticulating about his 
engines. We all arranged ourselves for tea as if 
conditions were more propitious: turned a cramped 
leg, and straightened out our clothes; the two little 
girls smoothed their laps as if to put napkins on 
them as at a children's party. Nicolai Timofevitch 
drew out of his plaid bag an extra glass for me ; the 
peasant family had two glasses, the girls shared one ; 
the infant had just had refreshment and was about 
to enjoy more. The mother gave to all of us some 
of her white bread; to Nicolai, the largest portion. 



48 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

It seemed to me that Nicolai^s black bread with but- 
ter and cheese was the finest delicacy I had ever 
tasted. Nicolai continued to keep the direction of 
the talk. He started our hostess off on a story of 
the experience of her husband with farm machinery. 
This stalwart woman knew whereof she was talking: 
it was easy to gather that she was as much the help- 
mate of her man in the field as about the hearth. 

As we talked the boat approached Tetjushee. 
Suddenly came a shot out of a clear sky across the 
stern. The peasant woman crossed herself, thank- 
ing God for deliverance; I followed her example; 
Nicolai turning to me, smiled, and rushed with nearly 
all the others to the landward side of the boat to see 
what was happening. The Soviet guard was com- 
ing aboard. Everybody pulled out his permission 
paper. The soldiers simply looked around at us 
down in third class : I could not have chosen a safer 
place. I avoided the eyes of the guards, though, I 
am sure, there was nothing suspicious about my 
appearance. I know how to look the workman; 
just a few touches give the disguise: a little pulling- 
down of the hat-brim, a little pulling-up of the coat- 
collar. 

We two prepared ourselves to sleep about dark, 
eleven by the new time. The peasant mother and 
children had long before settled for the night. It 
was soft starlight. The water lapped the sides of 
the boat as it steadily forced its path. First and 
second-class passengers could be seen now and then 
walking around their decks above. Below, with us, 



WOOD FLAME 49' 

most had curled up among their bags to sleep — 
there was not room to stretch full-length. A few, in 
two different groups, were still talking, the moving 
tips of their cigarettes throwing a light that made 
their faces appear unreal. Several rafts passed us, 
and the boatmen on them were singing their songs I 
love. Out of the night came those songs, accompanied 
by a splash of oars : songs unearthly, half-lament, ex- 
pressing vague beauty — a hope, only a hope of 
something good from fate. Nicolai, humming one of 
these chants long after the singers were passed by, 
put himself to sleep. It was not a cold night as 
summer nights on a Volga boat go, but I did not 
object when Nicolai had thrown half his purple-gray 
soldier's ulster over me. The coat did not seem to 
give as much heat as his body, wedged in close to 
mine. The general odor from that sleeping mass 
around me was not, I suppose, exactly salubrious ; 
though, to confess the truth, I was not as much 
troubled by it as a man of my class should have 
been. Besides I was looking up at the stars ; it was 
them I saw, not the sleeping mass ; my head was very 
close on the meal-sack to Nicolai's and his breathing 
was odorless, just agreeable sound! 

The peasant lady awakened me for tea in the 
morning by a vigorous tug at the elbow. I am sure 
she would have let Nicolai sleep on, if it had been he 
who was the sleepy-head. Her partiality for him 
was not in words, but evident enough. I did not 
mind. She knew I did not mind. Nicolai had al- 
ready made many friends in the stern. He had a 



50 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

way with these people. It was no great matter to 
him, I believe, whether he was third-class or first. 
He was third-class now, as was I, because there had 
been no other accommodations. 

We were drawing near to the landings at Kazan. 
By pre-arrangement, our peasant family spread 
themselves out to keep our places for us, and Nicolai 
and I pressed our way off the boat. It was a relief 
to move our big muscles freely again. Stationed 
amid the traffickers lining the bridge to the wharf 
was a lovely child selling wooden spoons, souvenirs of 
Kazan. Just for the chance to talk with her, and 
for having nothing to do, I negotiated for a spoon. 
Nicolai bought cigarettes, fruit water, and honey in 
the comb. As we were standing on the wharf bridge 
smoking, of a sudden he pressed my hand gently. 
It was an involuntary movement of his, a signal to 
a pal — it was years since I had felt such a pres- 
sure. I looked in the same direction as he, but was 
too late : a young woman had passed and was already 
half-hidden by those passing after her to the boat. 
Nicolai remarked : " Beautiful large eyes, beauti- 
ful ! " and without more turned to chat with an ugly 
beggar that interested him. In my mind I was seeing 
those beautiful large eyes of my daughter Maria 
Ivanovna, and the eyes of her mother. Had any 
harm befallen my family in Jaroslav? 

I had most cause to worry about my son Michail, 
a hot-headed young officer, who was sure to have 
taken part with the White Guards in the uprising. 
To him, if the uprising failed, the Bolsheviks would 



WOOD FLAME 51 

show no mercy. I was ready to believe the worst 
tales of Jaroslav. I am not a skeptic as to tlie 
brutality of man toward man. I have witnessed 
more than one pogrom against the Jews — in fact, 
I once helped to organize a mild one ; I have witnessed 
the ferocity of strikes, and in the course of one in 
1905, barely escaped assassination; in 1915 and 
1916 I was commandant in certain towns of Lith- 
uania when they were recaptured from the Germans, 
and the complaints brought to me of outrages com- 
mitted by our soldiers, though exaggerated to some 
extent by those suffering the invasion, should attest 
the fact that man can be a beast. My wife insists 
I am a pessimist, but, myself, I believe we ought to 
be honest with ourselves and admit that we've got 
the brute in man to calculate for. 

The wharf bells rang for the departure of the 
boat; Nicolai took my arm and hurried me back to 
our peasant friends; and I ceased to imagine what 
beastliness there might be at Jaroslav. There was 
a lovely sunset that evening to behold — a sunset 
which tinted the clouds to the very zenith. We at 
the stem had the benefit of its full glory only briefly 
as the boat was following the deep channel across 
the river. The slanting rays made resplendent the 
white walls and gilded domes of a castle-like monas- 
tery, which, half-way up the high bank at a bend in 
the river, commanded a wide view. We passed a 
whale-shaped island of glittering sandy-shoal. On 
the right bank were flat fields of grain; very fertile 
I thought — I was glad to see the grain so lush and 



62 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

nearly ripe ; I am not quite as mean as to wish famine 
on the country just to spite the Reds. Beyond 
the grain were low wooded hills. In the slanting 
rays, the fields were very bright and the woods very 
dark. Our boat came nearer than a stone's throw 
to the left bank, which rose as a clifF, steep and 
rocky, dark and cool. 

At this hour the upper deck was crowded as at 
no other time during the day with first and second- 
class passengers, walking arm-in-arm, after dinner. 
Nicolai was watching them as I dreamed the dreams 
of sunset. Again that involuntary pressure on my 
hand, and again I was too late to catch sight of the 
lady's face ! She wore a bright yellow sweater. She 
was walking alone, swiftly and nonchalantly, for all 
the world like my Maria Ivanovna. Nicolai whis- 
pered in my ear : " She looked at me, and I think she 
smiled." I looked full into his roguish face and re- 
plied, " How could she help it ! " which was a little 
more than I intended to say. At the same time 
there flashed through my mind the idea of my Maria's 
liking this fellow. What if he had the fascination 
for her he seemed to have for other people ! No ! 
Such a thing couldn't be ! As between men, fascina- 
tion is a raw, elemental, unrefined matter; but a 
woman does not permit herself to show liking for a 
man till she has ascertained his secondary social 
qualities. 

After the sun was down and the cool came on, we 
smoked his cigarettes, one after the other, till all 
were gone. Then I came to understand why he was 



WOOD FLAME 63 

a Bolshevik. He told me first how he experienced 
the Revolution. The supply system at the front, 
which had gone from bad to worse, was reorganized 
by committees of the railroad men themselves after 
the March Revolution. Nicolai worked upon one of 
these committees. He was proud of it ! After the 
October Revolution he became a Bolshevik with many 
of his railroad friends and served on more commit- 
tees. He was proud of it ! "A poor tiling to be 
proud of," you say. Perhaps, but you did not see 
the sincerity in those pale blue eyes, you did not note 
the ringing assertion in his husky voice. If you 
had, and if 3^ou are a man of any response to the 
feelings which move those beside you, you would have 
felt as I did, great respect for his feeling of pride. 

Nicolai was willing to pay the cost of his prole- 
tarian beliefs 1 When the Czechs took Samara and a 
new internal front was created along the Volga, he 
hastened to Simbirsk to run supply trains for the 
Red Army. As the Czechs advanced, the Soviet, 
bearing in mind the fate of the Commissars of Sam- 
ara, feared for their lives, and one of them, the 
Commissar of Foreign Affairs, " skipped the town." 
My young engineer took the vacant post, angry with 
several who had declined it out of fear. 

Nicolai considered himself lucky to escape alive 
from the ugly things that undoubtedly happened at 
Simbirsk. As he was fleeing the city, fortunately it 
was into the hands of a Czech band that he fell, 
rather than into the hands of the local White Guards, 
who might have recognized him. The Czechs never 



54 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

suspected him of being the Commissar of Foreign 
Affairs. Who would! But he was a Bolshevik — 
he was running away — so they took from him 
everything he had: his watch, all his money, and a 
i5ne new overcoat he had just purchased second-hand 
at the officers' cooperative selling society with the 
proceeds of his first month's advance salary. He 
escaped b}^ his face, which made him a friend in one 
of the Czech guards. This Czech connived at 
Nicolai's sudden disappearance down a side street. 
Then with money hastily borrowed from a friend, 
and with a good supply of bread and cheese presented 
by his goreetcJinia, he set out on foot. Two miles 
from the city he hired a peasant to drive him to 
Undoree. 

Such was the revolutionary history of Nicolai 
Timofevitch. I should have expected to find his 
Bolshevism just personal history — a narrative Bol- 
shevism; but I learned it was argumentative as well. 
The Bolsheviks should not have been the only party 
for a self-respecting Russian workman to join after 
the fall of the monarchy, but so it had seemed to 
Nicolai. He tried to show me why. " The freedom 
of the workman is safe only in his own hands," he 
said; "he is not safe to delegate it even to a Con- 
stituent Assembly uncontrolled by workmen." I 
listened and did not attempt to refute. Why should 
1? That would only have interrupted his flowing 
fervor. It was a beautiful whole he pictured; if a 
strong man pulled out one pillar, the whole would 
have fallen into pieces. As he waxed warm describ- 



WOOD FLAME 55 

ing the corner-stones, " justice for all " and " all 
for justice," his tone had the religious note. I was 
awed. I became convinced of the value of his opin- 
ions to him; there was that much truth in them. I 
was more than tolerant; it would have hurt me to 
think his high hopes were all a lie; and I remember 
saying once, just to indulge him, " perhaps, after 
all, if I were as young as you, or ever, by power of 
imagination and faith, had been as young, I might 
come to be guilty of holding these harsh opinions." 

At seven o'clock we drew up to the Camilot wharf 
at Nishni Novgorod, the Bolshevik's present destina- 
tion. These large Volga boats are tied up in a 
second, but getting ashore, for us at the rear in 
third class, was a matter of twenty minutes. One 
by one, bag and baggage, the third-class passengers 
marched slowly over the gang-plank. As I waited 
there in turn — confronted closely with our meal- 
sack, now on the peasant mother's back — it struck 
me afresh what a patient creature our Russian peas- 
ant is ! Our peasant companions stood there in line, 
weighted down with their precious flour, without a 
whimper! The calm and stolidity of nature herself 
was in their faces. 

To live in that mass of simple people for three 
days: to eat, to sleep, to smoke among them was a 
quieting experience ! It was quieting to be with 
them, even in their crowding and confusion: the hot 
words which they exchanged often with one another 
did not come out of their deeper currents. These 
last days on the stem of this boat I had been caught 



56 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

up in those currents, the worries that had fretted me 
for months became insignificant: I could wait for 
time to unfold the truth about Jaroslav, about the 
future of my country, about the end of the great 
World War; I could wait just as these folks did; 
eternity was the present! And sitting there among 
them, I breathed deeply, I was at peace with myself. 

Or was this frame of mind, in some degree, the 
influence of one man, my companion in this unique 
travel? Wasn't it that in the presence of this 
honest fellow, it was impossible to think hard 
thoughts, strained thoughts ! Perhaps, though, I 
give him qualities he does not deserve, qualities not 
recognized in him by those who had known him 
longer ! I was about to enter into a period of doubt 
about him, myself. 

As we stood waiting, Nicolai, to beguile the time, 
was using his last chance to plumb the naivete of 
the nursing-mother and her girls, but I could see he 
was impatient, in contrast to the rest of us, to be 
off the boat. Winking slyly, he asked me if I 
thought he might recognize on shore the girl of the 
yellow sweater 1 " But, seriously," I thought to my- 
self, " he does not intend to look for that girl. 
Little good it would do him, if he does ! " That he 
should be bent on leaving me forthwith as a mere 
boat acquaintance, hurt me ; but, in face of his 
apparent indifference, or thoughtlessness, I was too 
proud myself to suggest, as I wished, that we eat 
together on the hill at the " Metropole," my favorite 
restaurant in the city — there was time to go there, 




WOOD FLAME 57 

the boat would not leave for four or five hours. But 
so it was, as soon as we were off the boat, he gave 
me his remaining bread, gave me one of his cards, 
not very clean, and wished me a good journey on to 
Jaroslav. " Better stay away from that town 
awhile : it's an uncomfortable place for contra-revolu- 
tionaries just now," he said. As he finished speak- 
ing, he dashed off and left me in the crowd, very 
lonesome. I wanted to dash on after him to see 
what he would do. The bread he bequeathed me was 
a nuisance to carry. It occurred to me that that 
was why he had given it to me. 

With the bread under my arm I wandered into the 
town. I quickly left behind the dirty region of the 
wharfs and made my way through the street gate of 
the old Kremlin wall where it reaches furthest down 
the hill. Once on the bluff, I had range of the two 
rivers, the Volga and the Oka, the shipping, the 
ragged lines of the city, and the flat fields across the 
Volga. My mood of meanness disappeared. 

I love the city of Nishni most, of all Russian cities 
except my native Jaroslav and Mother Moscow. I 
think I could be content every night to walk among 
the gay crowd taking the air in the Nishni Kremlin. 
In it are several places to buy drinks, where there is 
good music ; and at a very small shop is to be had ice 
cream of different flavors. 

As I strolled in the park, by chance I met my 
friend, Alexander Sergeivitch Pianoff. There was 
no hesitation ; we went directly to " The Metro- 
pole," though he had already dined at home: Alex- 



68 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

ander Sergeivitch and I could recall happy hours 
spent at that restaurant, when, in our student days, 
I visited him in Nishni. Like other such haunts of 
mine, the place had changed within a year; it had 
lost its savor; the linen was not fresh; the women 
were shorn of jewels; the music, even, was without 
spirit, or so it seemed. We sat at a small table in 
our old corner, into which the brilliant light at the 
center of the room penetrated only a little. Alex- 
ander Sergeivitch was telling me his troubles, the 
typical troubles of a gentleman in these times ; pretty 
much an old story ! — we are all suffering from the 
ravages of the same foe, and I did not attend dil- 
igently to all he said. 

I was scanning the faces of the diners, when to 
my blank astonishment I discovered sitting at a 
small table across the room, and chatting hke old 
acquaintances, Nicolai Timofevitch and — would 
you believe it ! — Maria Ivanovna, my daughter 
Maria ! It was she who wore the yellow sweater, 
then ; her telegram failing to bring answer, she must 
have gone to Kazan herself to find me, and disap- 
pointed, she was now returning up the river. But 
why was she with the Bolshevik Commissar.? Had 
he known her all the time? Or was this — no, Maria 
would never fhrt with an entire stranger ! To be 
sure Maria was always a venturesome girl, but this 
far I never knew her to go. If they had met, where.? 
But how could my Maria possibly " meet " this fel- 
low. He was common; only an empty-headed, glib- 
tongued boy of the streets; a jovial companion to 



WOOD FLAME 59 

carry along one's fishing-tackle for a day's excur- 
sion, but for more — his perpetual grin would 
quickly tire one to death ! Yes, they must have met 
before : he must have rendered her some service in the 
past and now she was rewarding him too generously 
by giving him a dinner at the best restaurant in 
town. Maria is a pure idealist, I know; I have al- 
ways been afraid she would take a turn to the anar- 
chists. It's her mother she takes after in this lack 
of common sense. Certainly not her father! the 
nearest I ever came to being a " Red," was a friend- 
ship at law school with a youth that a few years later 
had to be sent to Siberia. And it was that fellow I 
had picked to lead all of us in the eyes of the world ; 
I used to pride myself on my intuition in this matter, 
for it was shared by no one else in the school. 

Just which of those troubles of the upper classes 
fell to all of us in a period of tyranny, PianofF was 
describing as his, more or less, I did not catch fully : 
I kept an eye peeled in the direction of the small 
table across the room. He sat with his back to me ; 
she was mostly hidden from me by a huge palm, 
except that her face was clearly visible when, in 
gusts of eagerness — a way with her and her mother 
— she bent forward and spoke to the Bolshevik. I 
did not like to see it, but I was forced by her very 
witchery to watch her: I may as well admit that 
Maria has always had her way with me; she never 
teased for what she wanted; she had only to look in 
her peculiar way. The question came : " Who is this 
that stirs her to appear so at her best and in her 



60 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

most bewitching manner ! " The answer came to 
me, no doubt telepathically from Maria as I watched 
her : " He stirs her, he interests her ; for the moment 
she forgets why she travels." Then I observed him. 
" Yes, the very person who made me forget why / 
traveled ! " 

Then I returned to my coffee and Alexander Ser- 
geivitch. I smoked one of his cigarettes. I was 
listening to dull tales about his wife and son, when 
the Bolshevik and Maria arose from the table to 
leave. He paid the bill, he tipped the servants: 
clearly, the dinner was his. With few words, I made 
my apologies to Alexander Sergeivitch for the neces- 
sity of an abrupt departure : I had not realized it was 
getting so late; it would be serious to miss even one 
boat while things were so unsettled; I must insist 
that he was not to see me to the boat — his wife 
was entertaining guests alone at home already too 
long, etc. 

I followed them to the park. They walked at the 
top of the hill, among the crowd, but not of it. 
Other people were looking at them — they were a 
vivacious pair, a handsome pair, of about the same 
height; but, in all other points a sharp contrast. 
But they saw no one; they were busily talking, or 
standing at the edge of the path and looking down in 
silence. 

It was dusk. The sun was down; its light shot 
up into a baggy, black cloud hanging over the west ; 
and, under this, on each side along the horizon, it 
made thin clouds resemble delicate pink scarves. To 



WOOD FLAME 61 

the east was a sheet of cloud which let down rain in 
streaks of light. Below this cloud had just ap- 
peared a large, jagged, jug-shaped moon, laced 
with thin racing clouds. The water of the river, 
wrinkled by the wind and spun with a scarcely-per- 
ceptible reflection of sunset pink, was, in the dusk, 
the brightest section of the landscape. It was the 
time also when the larger city lights were first seen; 
and spasmodically over in the direction of the rail- 
road station a shooting rocket rose and fell. It was 
not all quiet. One of the three war hydroplanes was 
still up and just buzzing home to its tent on the 
beach at the junction of the rivers. A fleet of war 
boats, including one four-stack destroyer, were 
screeching the same raucous signal, one after the 
other. 

He and she stopped to look at this scene, often 
for ten minutes at a time. Then they never talked. 
At such times they appeared to be strangers to each 
other. Then Nicolai would lead her again into the 
concourse of promenaders. Her arm was in his, and 
once, as they turned from the path of outlook, I 
thought that he pressed her hand more than was 
necessary to guide her; and that for an instant she 
swayed slightly toward him. It made me angry 
again. " Where had they met before ? " 

I followed them down to the Camelot wharf. I 
saw them parting. He did not hurry away as he 
had from me. After the shaking of hands, he lin- 
gered, she lingered. He lost his smile ; his grief was 
so genuine that I felt ashamed for the ill thoughts 



62 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

I had borne him — that I felt restrained from going 
over to speak to him. He was moving off; in a few 
moments he would be gone, gone in his smiling flesh, 
irrevocably. He went. 

"Where did you meet before, Maria? " 

" Him? We never met before to-day. Our eyes 
met yesterday on the boat. His eyes are very bold 
and commanding ! " 

"Maria!" 

"Father!" 

" I cannot understand how this happens. I never 
dreamed I should suffer such humiliation." 

" Such humiliation? " 

" That you make the acquaintance of this rap- 
scallion as if you were a girl of the people ! " 

" My knight came to claim me. Instantly, I knew 
his rank and his honor." 

" So ! a romance ! You are not the daughter I 
thought. You will tell me, perhaps, that you love 
the Bolshevik ! " 

" I do ! " 

" You — do ! He loves you? " 

" I wonder ! " 

*' Then you didn't discuss — eh — love ? He 
didn't make love to you?" 

" You are silly, father. Whoever discusses love ! 
Did we look as if we were discussing love? You 



saw us 



I " 



" As I told you, I saw you both together at the 



WOOD FLAME 63 

restaurant and along the promenade. I followed 
you." 

" You followed us ! You were going to shoot him, 
I suppose ! " 

" I suppose I did think of some such thing." 

" Only you couldn't get a gun anywhere. They 
wouldn't let you have a gun, you old counter-revolu- 
tionist ! '* 

" You discussed politics with the Bolshevik ? " 

" Well, I know he is a Bolshevik, a very nice Bol- 
shevik ! " 

" And you don't care that the man you love, is a 
Bolshevik?" 

"' I do not care what are the politics of the men 
I love." 

" The Tnen you love. How many men do you 
love? " 

" I never count." 

" Your answers are not respectful." 

" That is not a new complaint against me, father." 

'^ No ! You see I do not understand you : I have 
said that before, haven't I? I am amazed: How can 
you love a man in a day ! " 

" Love a man for a day? " 

" Yes. Put it so : would you love a man for a 
day?" 

" You catechize, father. Time isn't the length of 
love." 

" Well, I will not catechize you. I guess I do not 
know much of such things. Your mother might 



64. SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

teach you a thing or two — though I am not so sure. 
Your mother was the only woman I ever loved — a 
life-long love. What is the length of love, Maria ? " 

" What is length of fire? Some woods burn longer 
than others. Some coals bum longer than others. 
Coal burns longer than wood. Love lasts longest 
where there is most to consume." 

" And how long will your present flame consume 
— this boy of the people?" 

" Not much longer, father, I fear. This is wood, 
not coal. Wood flame has many shapes and many 
colors ! " 

"How? What is the matter with the fellow? I 
was just preparing myself to look upon him as son- 
in-law. Perhaps I could grow to tolerate him, if 
you persisted in your fancy. After a time I would 
like him." 

" No, you wouldn't I He wouldn't have much 
respect for you." 

" Perhaps that is the kind of people I prefer ! " 

" Gospadeen Asakalofl" is not like me, though ; his 
disrespect might not be like mine. He and I are 
as different as the poles." 

" Of course ! You think he is an infinitely better 
person than yourself." 

" No, he is no better than I. Only he has had 
more opportunities." 

" Oh, 3^es, more opportunities ! " 

" To be a sensible human being." 

" He is very wise, you think." 

" Wise ! Not at all. He never had so much more 



WOOD FLAME 65 

than other people that he had to be prudent." 

" He certainly is uncivilized — easily fathomed. 
That is why you have tired of him in a day." 

" I tire of him ! Ha ! It would be he that tired 
of me in a day. It is he who is unfathomable. Him 
I would never understand in all the days. Father, I 
offer you this consolation : I was never picked up by 
a man before." 

" I think we might be able to make something of 
the chap ; if we could bring out the good in him." 

'" Cover over the good ! " 

" And civilize him ; he would drop his proletarian 
theories. When shall we see him again, do you 
think?" 

" Probably never ! " 

" Probably never! Hasn't he your address? " 

" Yes, he asked for it and I gave it. It hurt 
me : it was the first formality of the evening ! " 

" And what is to prevent you from seeing each 
other again? " 

" I don't know. Simply, I feel we shall not." 

" You do not intend to see each other, to corre- 
spond ! " 

" Just now we intend to see each other for life, 
and to correspond when we don't." 

" You exchanged — ? " 

" Vows ! Nonsense, of course not ! He didn't 
make love to me, I tell you. That is, it wasn't what 
you call making love." 

" And you simply let this man slip out of your 
reckoning." 



66 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

" It is a cruel thought ! " 

" Come, child \ Why imagine such heartless 
thoughts? See here, I have his card! I was with 
him on the boat coming to Nishni. He isn't just the 
sort of man I should cultivate, but if you see some- 
thing in him, why then I — " 

" Would cultivate him ! " 

" Yes, I shall invite him to Jaroslav. I shall offer 
him good employment there. We will make a man 
of him. He shall not go out of our lives." 

" Make bright plans, father ; but in a month you 
will have picked another man for son-in-law. Per- 
haps I should have another man picked for myself." 

" Maria, you are content to love this man for a 
day.?" 

" I am not content. But this discontent of to- 
night is almost better than content ; the uncertainty 
and brevity of it — well, it's unf orgetable ! It was 
a splendid evening we spent. The view from the 
Nishni Kremlin was wonderfully beautiful." 

" The sunset on the Volga last night was also 
beautiful." 

" They said it was fine, but I wasn't interested. I 
was reading in my cabin. I don't care to see every 
fine sunset." 

" But to-night you seemed to enjoy the sunset 
so much that you forgot Gaspadeen AsakalofF for a 
few minutes. I saw that you both stood and looked 
and said nothing: you seemed to be strangers to each 
other." 

" I did not forget him, but something did come 



'WOOD FLAME 67 

between us; something terrible and wide; as wide as 
the world, and as terribly irresistible as the coming 
of another twilight — mysterious and pulsating like 
to-night's ! " 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 

I was on the ground in Soviet Russia where 
Counter-revolution first raised its head to be formid- 
able. Here was beginning a revolutionary movement 
that was respectable, that attracted all those ele- 
ments of the population formerly within the sacred 
circle of somebodies. Hitherto, revolution was a 
despised thing, generally treason. Now it was a 
glorified struggle, one hundred per cent, patriotic. 
The ninety-five per cent, nobodies had gained power. 

As the Germans, or a part of them, had long had 
Der Tag, so had the Russians, all except a paltry 
few, always had a day when Russia should rise tri- 
umphant the Russia of the Masses. Russian liter- 
ature is full of such a day. It was the embodiment 
of this hope, this day of Ivan, the nobody, that 
gave the work of Dostoieffsky and Tolstoy its power 
and hold on the Russian people. Even in Russian 
short stories one can perceive a groping recognition 
of class struggle and a crystalizing anathema against 
the proud and exclusive use of material possessions. 

Well, the day of the Masses had come ! The Pro- 
letariat was making their will felt. Those of us who 
considered it a privilege to be in Russia then saw the 
dawning of The Day as a miraculous yet accom- 

68 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 69 

plished fact, beside which all the terror and injustice 
there was sank to insignificance. 

And now the dispossessed class, at first stunned by 
its sudden fall, raised its head again ; Reaction be- 
gan in the summer of 1918. For a time the Bour- 
geoisie had hoped to crawl back to power by compro- 
mise, and by sprinkling soft words here and there, 
insinuating the necessity of themselves and of their 
virtues to the state. The Proletariat through its 
sane and most trusted deputies acknowledged the 
virtues in their intelligence and training, but dog- 
gedly refused to yield supreme power. 

The first outbreaks of counter-revolutionary zeal 
amounted to little but to cause the establishment of 
a counter-revolutionary tribunal with which to com- 
bat them; they provoked what terror there was; 
they brought out inter-class embitterment. Here 
and there the Whites gained a city for a few hours ; 
they waged battle about and in Jaroslav for a week. 

But the Whites were few in numbers, practically 
the officer-element alone, and they were cowardly. 
The thing that gave them courage and support was 
the uprising of the Czech prisoners in Russia at the 
instigation of the Allied chancellories. Here were 
soldiers as well as officers who would fight recklessly. 
These Czech fathers and sons most of all wanted to 
go home ; in a strange country they felt obedient to 
Czech commands from above ; accordingly, they did 
the best thing they knew under the circumstances ; 
they did not know that above the Czech commands 
from above was operating the jugglery of the Allied 



70 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

chancellories ; they did not know the import of their 
act to Russia. To Russia it meant two years of civil 
warfare. Every part of Russia suffered from it. 
To Kolchak and Denikin and their ilk it brought 
shame and a foul name as well as other miseries. 

The Czechs made some ostensible excuse, of course, 
for their sudden turning against their erstwhile 
friends. The Czechs and other war prisoners had 
been treated with extraordinary kindness in Russia, 
particularly after the Bolshevik revolution. fThe 
Proletariat considered them no natural enemies of 
its own and hailed them as comrades of the Inter- 
national. 

An occasion for the uprising was made of a quarrel 
as to whether the Czechs should be armed. The 
story went that the Bolsheviks, very likely scenting 
trouble, refused to give arms to their prisoners. 
Then the Czechs, at the command of their officers, 
took arms. The Bolsheviks protested. The Czechs 
took possession of the cities of Pensa, Syzran, and 
Samara. The Czechs in this body making the first 
offensive numbered not more than ten thousand men, 
but, scattered through Siberia were a hundred thou- 
sand of them more or less. These Czechs in Siberia 
simultaneously seized stations along the Trans- 
Siberian railroad and soon had an anti-Bolshevik 
government established throughout Siberia. Never 
before, I suppose, when civil war threatened a coun- 
try, has a force of its own war-prisoners been power- 
ful enough to precipitate the war. Everybody, in- 
cluding the Bolsheviks, believed the situation to be 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 71 

critical. I was with several American Y. M. C. A. 
workers at Kazan, which now became a " front." A 
fine dwelling on my street was requisitioned for the 
headquarters of Murayov, commander of the first 
Red army. Aeroplanes were flying over the city. 

Samara, two days' journey on the Volga River 
south from Kazan, was captured by the Czechs June 
9. The Red Guard there was caught unawares. 
Many of them were forced into the river and some 
drowned; others, running without any clothes 
through the streets of the city, were shot by partisans. 
The entrance of the Czech army into the city is made 
a veritable triumph by the anti-Bolsheviks. Flowers 
are strewn at the feet of the victorious war-prisoners ; 
elaborate dinners and balls are given in their honor ; 
diamonds flash again and costly raiment appears out 
of secret hiding-places, confirming a suspicion of 
mine that all the luxuries of living had not suddenly 
passed into Soviet coffers ; in the cathedral church 
the bishop allows the occasion to be marked by a 
service of extra pomp, and by the lighting of all 
the church candles as at Easter. 

All the Commissars of Samara found were killed 
on the spot. The Czechs let it be known that they 
intended to destroy all the Bolshevik Commissars 
they should ever find in any city. This was a part 
of their boast and assurance that all Russia would 
soon be in their hands. A counter-revolutionary Y. 
M. C. A. man who was in Samara at the time of its 
capture reported to us that the Czechs had strong 
and brave forces, and that thousands of Russians 



72 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

had joined their ranks. The Kazan press, however, 
declared that this reputed Russian increment con- 
sisted of boys only. 

It was, of course, of great moment how the Rus- 
sians looked upon the Czechs. Beyond any doubt, 
the " officer " and White Guard element, and, in fact, 
all counter-revolution except its fringes, looked upon 
these lusty Czechs as its savior, and hoped eagerly 
for a swift military conquest of Moscow itself by 
the Czechs for its own benefit. What the working- 
men and peasants thought was not so clear, but, 
generally, they seemed to oppose the new counter- 
revolutionary government set up by the Czech com- 
mander and composed of so-called " Constituent 
Assembly " men. The Mensheviks categorically re- 
fused to participate in the new government. Some 
of this opposition at Samara came to a head several 
days after the coup, in a riot in which 40 people 
were killed. In a daily column of a Bolshevik news- 
paper, under the heading; "Where Bolsheviks are 
not," I read that the Russians in the territory oc- 
cupied by the Czechs were loudly discontented with 
their self-elected deliverers ; that peasants refused 
them bread, and that workmen were striking in pro- 
test against their decrees. The Czechs very wisely 
did not wait upon any popularity they might have, 
but proceeded to the formation of a people's army, 
declared to be voluntary, but, even at the time partly 
conscripted, and, subsequently almost entirely con- 
scripted. 

The Czech victories were made possible by the 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 73" 

weakness of the " Red Army," which was then little 
more than the dregs of the old army just demob- 
ilized. Only rough men who liked soldiering as a 
business and those who would not look to peace-time 
employment hung on in the ranks. In addition to 
them were many attracted to the army by high pay 
and good food rations. Discipline was lacking, and 
drill ridiculously insufficient ; moreover, the old offi- 
cers and generals, who later led the army to such 
brilliant achievements, had not yet gone over to the 
Bolshevik side. Such commanders as the army had 
were none too trustworthy; that General Murayov, 
of whom I spoke, was accused of dealing with the 
Czechs and counter-revolutionaries, and was ar- 
rested. In the ranks, too, revolutionary loyalty 
could not be depended upon. During these critical 
days I heard that one of the Red regiments fighting 
at Simbirsk to stem the Czech advance, struck and 
demanded two months' pay in advance. Under 
threat of force one month's pay was given over to 
the soldiers and motors were sent to Kazan to bring 
back another month's pay. Instead of extortion 
money, machine guns were dispatched from Kazan 
and the mutineers were finally overpowered by troops 
more loyal. 

Under spur of necessity, a new " Red Army " was 
being formed by the energetic Trotsky. Pay was 
raised still higher. Some of the old officers con- 
sented to take positions. A new discipline was im- 
posed. Old munition plants were set going again ; I 
read in a Kazan newspaper that a munition works 



•74. SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

had been reopened in that city. The essential fea- 
ture in the rebuilding of the army was the develop- 
ment of the idea of labor battalions. The factories 
were urged to send contingents of real Communists. 
The reports from the front described how bravely 
these labor companies fought. It is admitted now 
that the successes of the new army would have been 
impossible without the valor and enthusiasm of these 
troops ; they were the shock troops of the army. 
Often in the city of Kazan I saw detachments of Red 
soldiers that did not appear like the rabble I had 
expected to see ; they must have been representatives 
of the " new " army, for they were young, upstand- 
ing, and clean-looking. 

Not only had the Proletariat a disorganized army 
to begin its fighting with ; it had, also, a divided 
citizen-body; citizens of many political shades were 
plotting against the Bolsheviks. Furthermore, the 
very bottom of government was uncertain : the Soviet 
was a raw, untried, new-fashioned instrument for 
governing. 

The Soviet form of government had one funda- 
mental weakness for a new government : a basic prin- 
ciple of it was decentralization. Moscow was not 
the rallying point and guide and authority it was 
later to become. The Bolsheviks are great believers 
in the doctrine of " state's rights." We know that 
in the early and in the later history of a certain 
great republic support of this doctrine produced 
periods of instability. Perhaps excessive decentral- 
ization is a disease common to the childhood of 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 75 

federalism. This principle was even made consti- 
tutional in the new Russia. The Constitution of the 
Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic states 
(Art. I: Chapt. 1, Sec. 2) that " The Russian Soviet 
Republic is organized on the basis of a free union 
of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national 
republics "; and in (Art. I; Chapt. 4', Sec. 8) states 
that " In its efforts to create a league — free and 
voluntary, and for that reason all the more complete 
and secure — of the working classes of all the peoples 
of Russia, the third Congress of Soviets merely 
establishes the fundamental principles of the Feder- 
ation of Russian Soviet Republics, leaving to the 
workers and peasants of every people to decide the 
following questions at their plenary sessions of their 
Soviets ; namely, whether or not they desire to par- 
ticipate, and on what basis, in the Federal Govern- 
ment and other Federal Soviet institutions." 

This constitutional principle was adhered to in- 
stinctively. In the early months of Bolshevism, it 
was only by courtesy that one Soviet recognized the 
arrangements of another Soviet. At the most it 
might be said that the decrees of the Moscow Soviet 
were only weighty precedent. An American consu- 
lar agent came to Kazan to distribute President 
Wilson's speeches in Russian in the factories. The 
local city Soviet was willing that this literature 
should be distributed, but would give no written order 
compelling factory heads to admit the gentleman. 
This doughty American — I met him — pressed it 
upon the city fathers that the Moscow Soviet and 



76 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

all the other Soviets with which he had had dealings 
had given him a written order; that was as it was, 
but Kazan was obedient unto Kazan only. 

Local independence was carried to the point of 
secession. Many parts of old Russia, such as Fin- 
land, the Baltic Provinces, and the Ukraine, had 
already declared their independence of the old im- 
perial ties. Other states were on the point of fol- 
lowing their example. It was reported that the 
Georgians were eager to set up their own sove- 
reignty ; also the Don Cossacks were restless and 
agitating for a Don republic. Separatist tendencies 
were not only geographical. The Tartars held a 
convention which bespoke some sort of internal au- 
tonomy for their race, scattered though it was over 
a wide area. Even the cotton producers and mer- 
chants were meeting in. Moscow in the separate inter- 
ests of the Kingdom of Cotton; they wished Cotton 
autonomy — under All-Russian Federation protec- 
tion. 

Perhaps the most demoralizing of all disruptive 
forces within the Soviet realm were the bitter attacks 
the government had to withstand from both the Left 
and the Right. The Anarchists, at the Left, were 
a powerful party in some cities. In Samara, for 
example, they made a strong bid for power in May, 
and once when the Bolshevik troops Avere outside the 
city fighting, they took control, deposed the Bolshe- 
vik Commissars and installed some of their own. 
Their coup lasted about six hours, till the Red 
troops returned. 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 77 

The Right Social Revolutionary and Menshevik 
Socialist parties were no less hostile. The Socialist 
leaders of these parties, being no longer the directors 
of the Socialist activity, were smarting under the 
eclipse they suffered. They preferred to save the 
Revolution in their own way and not under the Bol- 
shevik aegis. It was not till a year later that they 
realized that the only way for them to help to save 
the Revolution was to support the Bolsheviks, or, at 
least, its Red Army, in the campaigns against Kol- 
chak and Denikin. 

The Social Revolutionaries (except the Left Social 
Revolutionaries) and the Mensheviks were decried 
by the Bolsheviks as counter-revolutionaries, as in 
truth, at that time, many of them were. Openly, 
these moderate Socialists were finding fault with the 
Bolsheviks, as, of course, it was easy to do : the Bol- 
sheviks had not yet brought about Utopia as some 
people expected they might ; hunger was increasing 
instead of decreasing. Secretly, the Moderates were 
responsible for a reign of terror, anti-Bolshevik, 
which began the last week in June, Volodarsky, a 
Commissar of Petrograd, being the first victim. A 
committee of inquiry into these assassinations in 
Petrograd reported that the conspira^cy was financed 
by Englishmen. In Kazan two prominent Bolshe- 
viks were victims of this murder drive. The funerals 
of these revolutionary martyrs were big public dem- 
onstrations. The whole working population of Pet- 
rograd turned out to the Volodarsky ceremonies. In 
every case there is the warm oratory of eulogy; the 



78 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

pre-revolutionary secret services of the hero are espe- 
cially recalled. It is pointed out that he died in 
sight of the promised land ; that the cause for which 
he labored to the final sacrifice will soon be com- 
pletely won. Much fervid poetry about him ap- 
pears in the newspapers. 

The Bolsheviks came nearest a fall with the Left 
Socialist-Revolutionary sedition the first part of 
July. From the accession of the Bolsheviks to 
power, the Left Social-Revolutionaries had been 
working hand in hand with them and holding office in 
the Soviet government. Some of their more influ- 
ential members came to favor declaring war on Ger- 
many, with the idea, especially, of freeing the 
Ukraine peasants and comrades from the German 
yoke. Through the plotting of this faction, Mir- 
bach, the German ambassador, was shot and killed 
in a theater in Moscow. The Bolsheviks might have 
agreed to make war on Germany in order to purchase 
recognition and other assistance from the Allies, but, 
otherwise, they were unalterably for the peace they 
had so dearly bought from Germany at Brest- 
Litovsk. Some of the Left Social-Revolutionaries 
tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks and usurp the 
power. There was a short party battle in the 
streets of Moscow and the Bolsheviks triumphed. 
The Left Social-Revolutionaries split, a pro- 
Bolshevik section forming a new party. 

This was the last serious attempt to set up an anti- 
Bolshevik government of Socialists within Soviet 
Russia. The day of the Moderates and Compromise 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 79 

was past. From now on there were only two fac- 
tions, Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks. At this time 
I was traveling over a wide stretch of the country. 
I left Kazan, July 23, traveling by boat to Nishni- 
Novgorod, by train to Moscow, Petrograd, Vologda 
and back to Moscow, all within two weeks. In the 
course of my travels I felt the political pulse of a 
large part of Russia. An average pulse, an average 
of two diametrically opposed pulses, was about the 
same in all the cities and towns I visited. But there 
was no person of average pulse. The Left Social- 
Revolutionary sedition had broken away whatever 
middle ground there may have been. So it is always 
with Counter-Revolution. When in the history of 
any country Conservatism reaches a stage where it 
is reactionary to the people's dominant will, a clean 
split is made that is wider than the gulf between 
Heaven and Hell. 

iSuch was the Russia — with many of its choicest 
territories lopped off; rent in two by counter-revolu- 
tion — that the Allies declared war upon in July, 
1918. The smoke in which we had been living in 
Russia cleared away. 

For many months no one had known positively 
which way the Allied diplomacy cat would jump. 
Wlien I first arrived in Russia in May there were 
rumors, which have since been proved true, that the 
Bolsheviks would openly go over to fight on the side 
of the Allies, if the Allies would recognize them. 
Raymond Robins had done his utmost to bring this 
about. With his failure and his departure to Amer- 



80 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

ica, there was no longer any representative of the 
Allies left in Russia not really hostile to the Bolshe- 
viks. On the other hand, there were rumors, 
emanating chiefly from Allied sources, that German 
influence was strong among the Bolsheviks. The 
arrival of a German ambassador, Mirbach, with staff 
and military escort speeded these rumors. On the 
roof of Mirbach's house was placed a formidable 
anti-aircraft gun, which the Y. M. C. A. could see 
from its headquarters and felt a menace. Mirbach's 
assassination proved that his strong guard and his 
gun were necessary precautions and not signs of Bol- 
shevik favoritism. Trotsky put well the Bolshevik 
attitude toward Germany at this time in a speech 
of his I saw quoted from " Pravda " : " The Bolshe- 
viks do not wish an alliance with Germany; no one 
who understands the Bolsheviks could believe they 
do; however, if actually they had to choose between 
Japanese intervention and German intervention, 
there would be no hesitation; Japan would come in 
for Japan, and would stay ; Germany would come in 
with no less sinister designs, but the duration of the 
German occupation would be less certain. The Bol- 
sheviks would hope for changes brought about by 
internal changes in Germany." 

The Allies had really made their decision when 
they egged on the Czecho-Slovaks to revolt. Bolshe- 
vik leaders uncovered the part Allied agents had in 
this conspiracy, and therefore expected the direct 
attack by the Allies upon the Soviet Government; 
they faced war with the Allies with reluctance. 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 81 

The Allies, themselves, finally cast the die. Allied 
pronunciamentos appeared late in July setting 
forth the great concern of the Allied governments for 
Russian welfare and independence, and their equal 
concern that the ports of Russia and all the war sup- 
plies in Russia should be safe from the Germans 
— even those in Vladivostok. President Wilson's 
pronunciamento spoke of Russia with especial tender- 
ness. The Bolsheviks knew then where Mr. Wilson 
stood ; their socialist teachings should have intimated 
as much to them long before. Wilson was counter- 
revolution. From now on counter-revolution re- 
ceived from Wilson and the Allies direct support in 
money, weapons, food and encouragement. The 
British Government considered counter-revolution 
even an affair of honor : in due course they decorated 
Denikin. Work for counter-revolution had recog- 
nized merit outside Russia ; it gave international good 
standing. 

I arrived at Vologda just in time for the excite- 
ment and effect in that north region of the beginning 
of the hostile movement of the English against Soviet 
Russia. An official poster appeared all over the 
city ordering all foreigners to leave within twenty- 
four hours on penalty of death, as they could not be 
protected at Vologda. The railroad line to Arch- 
angel was closed to all except Red troops. We three 
Y. M. C. A. men there bought tickets to Moscow at 
once. The Secretary to the American Embassy was 
provided a train, and, in spite of his proud Amer- 
ican threats, was forced to leave at a certain hour. 



82 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

The National City Bank of New York men made 
protests, but went as ordered, taking their bank. 

At Moscow we learned that British and French 
officials had been arrested. No Americans were ar- 
rested, but Russians could no longer put us in a 
special category of friendly foreigners when it had 
appeared in their newspapers that Americans and 
Japanese had agreed on joint intervention in Siberia, 
and absolute support of the Czech troops there. 
This report was, of course, true, although I hesitated 
to believe it at the time. Moreover, the English had 
already invaded the country at Archangel, and had 
a little skirmishing with the Red Guards there. 
French officers had been discovered acting with the 
Czechs. . 

These events greatly excited us at the Y. M. C. A. 
palace, the luxurious home of a Russian ex(?)- 
millionaire, where we were putting on the finishing 
touches to packing already planned weeks before. 
The Y. M. C. A. leaders believed that we were no 
longer safe as Americans in Soviet Russia; the spe- 
cial distinction previously accorded us would of 
course now be forfeited. These leaders, however, 
wished to continue the work of their secretaries 
trained for Russia ; the obvious way to do this was to 
go across the lines into a congenial anti-Soviet Rus- 
sia. Besides, there was positive reason for our going 
thither which it was not necessary to state. I was 
matter-of-fact enough to protest against going, at 
least as far as I was personally involved, on the 
ground that intervention in Russian affairs, at no 



COUNTER-REVOLUTION 83 

matter what military gain, was wrong, especially for 
America; for by any logical deduction it was coun- 
ter-revolutionary. The Y. M. C. A. is, however, not 
an individual with a conscience, but an American 
social group, and, therefore, speculation as to the 
righteousness of American intervention was idle to 
it ; to its mind the bigger social group in which it was 
included could not be wrong. 

Accordingly, the whole Y. M. C. A., together with 
a small group of Y. W. C. A. women, went to Nishni- 
Novgorod on the Volga River, hoping to get from 
there into the Czech lines. The Czechs and counter- 
revolutionaries had just taken Kazan several hun- 
dred miles south on the river, and the counter-revolu- 
tionary Russians and all foreigners sympathizing 
with them hoped that Nishni would also soon fall, 
and then, promptly, Moscow, itself, thus making 
Russia once more a decent civilized country for them. 
We spent ten days at Nishni-Novgorod, living first 
on our Y. M. special cars at the station, and later on 
two boats at the wharves ; the Kerzenetz, a steamer 
lent the Y. M. C. A. by the Soviet Government for a 
campaign of agricultural education, and another 
large steamer. It was a delightful house-boat party. 
We made merry with tea-parties. We attended 
symphony concerts on the hill, glimpsing sunsets on 
the way home ; the concert was an hour or two earlier 
than usual, because martial law obtained and every 
person had to be in his house by ten o'clock. 

But the prospect of welcoming victorious Czechs 
faded day by day ; we had to read of constant Bolshe- 



84* SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

vik successes against them on the Volga front. 
Then, removing the annoyance of making our own 
decisions, came the order of the American Consul- 
General for us to return to Moscow. As it hap- 
pened, we left Nishni to leave Russia, stopping in 
Moscow only long enough to move our baggage to 
the special train of first-class sleeping-coaches that 
was to take all the Americans and some other for- 
eigners out of Russia. At the little bridge mark- 
ing the boundary between Russia and Finland, the 
Finnish officials read out our names from our pass- 
ports one by one. As my name was called and I 
went with my especial lump in my throat over to the 
Finnish side, a feeling not quite homesickness but 
something like it, saddened me. W^e made the jour- 
ney through Finland to Stockholm without excite- 
ment. 



SMASHING THE LINES 

AN ACCOUNT, LARGELY IMAGINARY, 
OF BI-ORGANIZATION ACTIVITY 

The private car of the Association stood in the 
railway yard just a little way from the Jaroslavki 
station at Moscow, swept, windows being washed ; the 
car that had traveled in a wide circle for us : Petro- 
grad. Samara, Archangel [ It must be occupied with 
evidence of immediate use in order to be retained by 
us; it was a favor to be had only by the enjoying. 
And " Whiskers," a reverend Mr. Whiskers, and I 
were detailed to enjoy it. Accordingly we made 
ourselves comfortable in one of its coupes. To re- 
pair or to forestall, sleeplessness, I have forgotten 
which now, we proceeded to take a nap ; but the sun, 
shining broadly into the coupe, and the flies, which 
seemed too many for so short a season, combined to 
defeat our purpose until we counter-attacked by 
spreading newspapers over our faces and hands ; a 
suggestion of Whiskers — I believe he had slept away 
many such a summer afternoon before. Whiskers 
taught me also the value of cheese for such a waiting 
game. He had bought three pounds of cheese at the 
famine price of twenty roubles a pound, and in no 

time at all he had consumed two pounds and I, one. 

85 



86 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

It was exceedingly young cheese. " There's nothing 
mature in this country nowadaj^s," Whiskers consol- 
ingly remarked; however, I took a fancy to the 
cheese in just that degree of immaturity; in fact, I 
learned to like cheese then by liking it young. We 
passed the night quietly enough ; I was not disturbed 
by the shrill whistling of the shifting engines as I 
had expected, from previous acquaintance with Rus- 
sian railroad-yards. 

In the morning confusing rumors were brought to 
us. One was that we should all go out of Russia 
through Finland. The German representatives 
would guarantee us safe passage through Finland if 
we would use what influence we had to help Germans 
out of Russia at any time. As an alternative, we 
should travel at once through Siberia and America 
to France or Northern Russia. 

The decision reached in the councils of the chiefs at 
26 Smolensky Boulevard was to go to Nishni Nov- 
gorod. We could 1 It was no secret why: we all 
considered that it was only a matter of days before 
our friends, the Czechs, were to conquer that fair 
city. 

The baggage ! Our impediment ! Tons of 
extras that are the traveler's excuse for being ! For 
handling baggage, a committee was appointed, of 
which I have been a happy member ever since ; Charlie 
Winthrop, " Senator Charles," being chairman. 
The Y. W. C. A. were making their escape with us ; 
consequently, there were added to our baggage tons 
of pots, kettles, and wash-basins — white wash- 



SMASHING THE LINES 87 

basins that in dark Russia served as an emblem of 
the cleansing power of the American woman. " Bags 
and kettles to the Nicolaesky Station ! " was the or- 
der. Thither bags and kettles were transported by 
robber-baron truck-drivers, unloaded by their 
majesties, the porters, and then! Then we learned 
that our cars were to go to the station for Nishni, 
the Kursky station. To the Kursky station, then, 
ye barons and kings of transport ! At the Kursky 
station they politely told us that our cars were on 
the way between the two stations and would arrive 
probably in four hours. It was ten o'clock at night. 
So, tram cars having stopped, four of us piled into 
one droshky, looking more like baggage than men, 
and returned to " 26 Smolensky," to sleep, bedless ; 
on guard at the station were left Hercules Homestead 
and Fred Ness. 

At ten the next morning our cars had not yet 
arrived at the Kursky. So I became guard of the 
mountain of our baggage in the main hall of the sta- 
tion; I sat as contentedly as possible on a Y. W. C. 
A. white bath-tub till four o'clock in the afternoon. 
As I waited I read in an old Scribner's a romantic 
article about Old Newport, and a salty description 
of some Maine coast towns in summer ; this number 
had its article on Russia, of course : Stuff and Non- 
sense manufactured from a few arranged interviews 
with officers during the Kerensky regime. Hercules 
Homestead, still on committee duty, ajmused himself 
by giving twenty kopecks to every beggar who ap- 
proached him. The last time I asked his count, he 



88 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

had distributed twelve roubles among sixty beggars. 

The train was to pull out at six. At five-thirty 
the party, including the " Y " girls, filed through 
the platform gate, muttering " Amerikanski Messe " 
to the challenging guard, and marched, loaded with 
odd scraps of baggage picked up at the last minute, 
to cars designated by a knowing Russian secretary. 
And made a mistake I We had taken possession of 
the wrong cars in the wrong train, the special train 
for Nishni of Citizen Trotsky and suite, a train de 
luxe. We had to move our litter to more compressed 
space. Senator Charles left behind his box of 
leaflets explaining President Wilson to the Russian 
people; he said this was not a case of his reputed 
forgetfulness, but strategy. After a fuss, and the 
bobbing up of each " Y " girl in turn to inquire, we 
found the right cars, with name-tags of occupants, 
written in Pa Sherman's distinctive hand, tacked to 
each coupe. Who was with whom? " Goods " with 
"goods," "bads" with "bads"? No, a mistake: 
two smokers with two non-smokers. Righted, at the 
suggestion of the non-smokers. 

To Nishni Novgorod, the Fair City ! By night ! 
A cold, frosty night with a bright moon displaying 
yellow flat grain fields and silvery birches, and rail- 
road banks covered with dewy wild-flowers. In our 
little freight-car, tagging our sleepers, was a bour- 
geois store of flour that caused us uneasiness ; some- 
how, somebody might detach this little car. A 
guard was appointed, one American, and one Russian, 
secretary, for each separate hour of the night, in 



SMASHING THE LINES 89 

order to patrol the flour at each stop and also to 
keep out of our cars the crowds of Russians traveling 
from station to station. During my watch from 
three to four, one fellow persisted in getting on our 
car; the young Russian who was on guard with me 
maliciously locked him into the vestibule, with the 
result, so the young Russian told me with huge de- 
light, that at the following station, which happened 
to be his, the fellow had to extricate himself and 
baggage through the vestibule-door window. Dur- 
ing my watch we passed Vladimir. The walls and 
buildings of its Kremlin shone in the oblique rays of 
the rising sun, a magic city, white, white, white ! 

So, you have us at Nishni, the Y. M.'s and the Y. 
W.'s, ready for the dash across the Red lines ! By 
compromise, by plain presto-change, or simply by 
being there when the Czecho-Slovak armies moved 
into town. Let me narrate that campaign of the two 
middle weeks of August, 

We Americans must not be conspicuous. That 
was the order-in-council. No. 1. Therefore, only a 
few of us could go to town at the same time, and only 
two together. As if we could fool the Bolsheviks ! 
They knew we were in town soon enough and consid- 
ered our case. They were remarkably courteous. 
However, we could get no permission to go through 
the lines to Samara. Messengers were sent to Mos- 
cow with letters ; we thought it unwise to use the tele- 
graph. Mr. Chicherin, the Bolshevik foreign min- 
ister, was sick, but our persistent Mr. Bavis would 
get the permission from him or would not permit him 



00 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

to recover health. We would accept a permission to 
leave Russia in any way; for we were come to that, 
now. While it was preferable just to fade away 
into that part of Russia returned to law and order, 
still it was above all imperative that we disappear 
altogether from this land of the federated republics. 
Feeling was rising against the Americans. The 
distinction between us and the English was growing 
slighter and slighter. The girl who sold us flour- 
candy at a Nishni store called us " enemy." That 
same morning's yesterday's Prwvda had announced 
the landing of the Japanese and the American 
" Imperialists " at Vladivostok. Members of our 
party were arrested frequently by some simple- 
minded Red-Guards for officers. Such a stupid mis- 
take ! Who would take our dusty, f rowsily-dressed 
secretaries for bourgeoisie ! And then, too, so arbi- 
trarily to misplace us: the American can never con- 
sider himself as bourgeois ; that's a foreign term and 
a foreign conception. But you see the class struggle 
all over Russia was becoming keener and keener. 
Every town had its committee against counter-revo- 
lution. In Petrograd and in Moscow all officers were 
arrested and many held in confinement. However we 
looked, we certainly felt smudgy — till we found one 
of the city's steambaths — but I suppose our faces 
were too intelligent not to give us away. One even- 
ing the whole party was arrested at the station as 
we were eating dinner, and marched, hatless and coat- 
less — and caneless — to the police station. The 
committee-head there, after hearing what interpre- 



SMASHING THE LINES 91 

ters had to say for us, pronounced the whole affair 
an unfortunate misunderstanding, and we fellows 
pronounced it a grand lark — that is, afterward ! 

Every such campaign has its determinative epi- 
sodes. Every such set of days has its own gist for 
diaries. So, amid the suspense of this fortnight, 
there began for two in the joint parties, an engross- 
ing, and for all of us, a diverting, series of episodes 
that, at times, made private interest eclipse inter- 
national. It was so ! 

In my coupe, among the four (?) " goods " was 
one Fred Ness, a Y. M. C. A. secretary of several 
years' service in China and Russia : plain in appear- 
ance, but sound in judgment, full of initiative, and 
withal comparatively open-minded. One quickly 
felt there was a lack of savor in him; perhaps it was 
that by going on Y. M. C. A. service to China in his 
early twenties he had lost touch with the tang of the 
social life of men and women of his own age. His 
slang was arrested at the college-graduate period. 
It was, you might say, academic. He hadn't been 
disillusioned in the microscopic world of money and 
theater-going, of book-talk and women — many 
women ; he was drafted into the macrocosm of 
" China for the world ! " Any man of twenty would 
be dwarfed by such large aims. 

Fred by accident came to eat with the Y girls 
in their car. He happened to pass through at din- 
ner-time one day and exclaimed " ah ! " at the rice 
pudding; after that he ate four meals and his teas 
there every day. There also he found several other 



92 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Y. M.'s, attracted by some convenience or other. 
And already the pairing had begun. It happens so 
in any society that holds together a week, or in a 
house-party over a week-end. What so natural that 
it should happen when a group of educated young 
Americans of both sexes meet on national service 
abroad! What better way to forget Trotsky and 
the orders of " a state of siege " ! 

Fred was in siege. It was the black-haired Elise 
that first he noticed, then admired, then acquired as 
a habit. Elise was a woman who could travel over 
a whole continent with only a knapsack, a new kind of 
woman to Fred. He didn't know that while he had 
been apart from women in his American university 
and in China, the woods were becoming full of such 
trim women, women without those loose ends that his 
sisters and female cousins exhibited. Elise was firm 
and quick to make clean, ample plans of action. She 
bought curios and pictures with talkativeness. She 
could describe a little shop in an off-street, so that 
a man would hunt it out the next morning for him- 
self, or, if he understood woman's way of inviting, 
would request the lady to conduct him, herself, to the 
spot. And Elise knew French and German well 
enough to make the learning of Russian by the com- 
parative method seem easy and entertaining to a 
fellow — any way is easier than learning by a book ! 
Furthermore, Elise was. without doubt, a woman: 
uncertain, full of interesting little wishes, and al- 
ways sympathetic toward Fred's little ways of think- 
ing. She understood why he had tried foi'eign serv- 



SMASHING THE LINES 93 

ice, just during those formative years, too ; it was 
better than the crude ambition to make money in 
New York or Chicago. 

Fred's warm social life was only a little more 
lively than that of the rest of us up there at Nishni. 
Miss Sayles, an old-maid at twenty-four, and Miss 
Morton of the thick eyeglasses, far less an old-maid 
at thirty-nine, also attracted " regulars," but for all 
we might conjecture, these might be only flirtations. 
Besides, to be sure, there was Mr. Niles who was 
doubtless engaged to Miss Tibbetts, but his was one 
of those unromantic cases of mild propinquity that 
can never make deep gossip; everj^body simply said: 
" Why don't they announce it, so we can have a 
party, so we can be sentimental about it, even if they, 
themselves, aren't." 

We all " got pretty thick." Within thirty-six 
hours we were calling each other by first-names. Our 
social life wasn't the less cool, nor the less lively, that 
we were living on a boat ! You see we were thrown 
out of our special cars on Track No. 6 in the rail- 
road yard. Some railroad commissar sent word 
by a saucy deputy that our railroad cars 
were not given us for hotels, and later we 
received a handsome rent-bill covering the days 
we had lived in the cars. Then John Daly 
shrewdly engaged for our occupation one of the 
squadron of boats tied up in enforced idleness at the 
Volga wharfs. It was an old fellow, used of late 
only in the local traffic, full of small life — they 
called for my last can of Thomson's powder (buy 



94 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Thomson's, it is the deadliest kind!). On this boat 
our parties were divided into two groups. I was 
quartered in second-class, where were all the Y girls. 
The men at the other end were, strange to say, better 
fed: they had among them a born cook; his menus 
comprehended all the requisite food values, and bet- 
ter still, double the number of necessary calories. 
But we on our end of the old tub suffered no lack! 
We also had griddle cakes, a real pie, American pud- 
dings ; and we alone had a genuine double-decker, 
chocolate frosted-cake. The Russian secretaries 
called this Mazurka, a Polish concoction; however I 
am certain that, though generally speaking the 
Russian cooking may excel ours, they don't know 
how to bake anything quite like a Yankee frosted- 
cake. Elise made the frosting, Fred scraped the 
frosting-dish ! Such were his privileges during those 
days when we were all privileged to live high, higher 
than we had lived since we left home. And it didn't 
cost us a great deal, only about fifteen roubles 
($1.80) per day. 

You can imagine what parties we had : tea parties, 
reading parties, Russian-study parties, marketing 
parties ! The tea parties were for the small sets of 
pairs, of from four to six persons. Passing by cabin 
doors, one could catch a glimpse of all the good 
things ; j am, honey, butter, sugar and white bread ! 
Now you must know that all these articles are at the 
present time in Russia more rare and more to be 
desired than ancient wines. The opening of a pot 
of jam, jam in which sugar is mixed as it used to be 



SMASHING THE LINES 95 

in the old pre-famine days, is attended by much 
ceremony and much watering of the mouth. I sat 
in at one reading party. A simple translated story 
of Tolstoy's was read by one of the wits, by the fel- 
low who amused himself editing a daily nonsense- 
sheet and writing festive poems. I seated myself 
near the sugar-bowl, and in the tense moments of 
the narration — some parts of the story were very 
touching ! — I smuggled lump after lump of sugar 
into my tea, tea so strong that one couldn't see the 
lump dissolve in it ! All these folks are indeed fond 
of Tolstoy ; every one has him along ; he survives each 
paring of baggage. 

This military adventure of ours, this attempt to 
break through the crumbling (?) lines of the Bolshe- 
viks was a blithesome time, and to give it up, brought 
us, as day-to-day mortals, real sorrow. But it was 
a failure, at least as a short-time proposition. We 
all believed that sooner or later there would be an- 
other power in Nishni Novgorod than the Bolsheviks, 
but we couldn't await that day. The Bolsheviks 
were roguishly winning little victories down the river. 
Our good consul-general insisted that we come to 
Moscow: Moscow was a better point of departure! 
As we assembled for a religious service, Sunday 
morning, August 25th, in the first-class saloon, our 
leader remarked how it seemed that all our important 
movements in Russia had had to be made on Sunday ; 
telegrams were read ; there was no case even for argu- 
ment about alternatives ; so we should try to make 
the evening train for Moscow if permissions from the 



96 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Nishni authorities could be obtained during the day ; 
there was no time for the religious service ; the heavy 
baggage must be ready within an hour; a small tug 
would pull alongside for it. 

But in the face of this doom, we in second-class 
continued our revels. That was the day of the 
frosted-cake. There were " last teas " in the after- 
noon. At six o'clock word came that the light bag- 
gage must be down instantly for the droshkies. This 
news occasioned a scramble ! We " downed " hot 
cocoa and white bread and jam, and, helter-skelter, 
packed kettles and pans, camp chairs and cooking- 
dishes. We must not leave behind the family broom ; 
our broom had been a find; it's only brushes they 
use in Russia. Other household essentials to be sure 
to pack were the fool maimed doll and our salt and 
pepper knick-knacks. Napoleon and Joseph, table 
gods. Another word came ! The droshkies will not 
come for us ; they fear the early closing-hour in the 
state of siege. A catastrophe, indeed! A big pile 
of our baggage lay at the wharf beside the boat. 
The station was three miles distant. But large 
promises brought first one droshky and then another. 
Meantime, the members of the party hurried off to 
the station, some riding and some shank's-mare, 
carrying along as much of their own personal belong- 
ings as bearable. I was one of the victims who 
walked, carrying my rucksack on my back, with tea- 
pot and water-bottle tied to it ; a typewriter, walk- 
ing stick, and small traveling-bag in one hand; and 
on my shoulder balancing a sheet, which contained 



SMASHING THE LINES 97 

all the traveling equipment of Lena, a sweet little 
Russian domestic attached to the Y. W. C. A. Lena 
was trotting along beside me, and trying to keep up 
with my long strides, and saying " Nicheva," which 
translated in this case, might mean : " there is no 
hurry 1 " 

Fred and Elise were the last to go. Fred was 
that magnanimous he would not leave the burning 
deck. And Elise was as magnanimous as Fred ! In 
a broken caravan, Y. M.'s and Y. W.'s, manservants 
and maidservants, goods and chattels, — all reached 
the station in time, except Fred and Elise. They, 
faithful ones, saw the last scraps of that pile of 
baggage on a droshky, including the maimed doll, 
and Napoleon and Joseph, but there was no room re- 
maining for them to ride. They waited too long for 
another droshky and missed the train. They were 
the only Americans left in the city. They hadn't a 
piece of baggage between them; and, what was a 
more serious inconvenience, neither spoke more than 
traveler's Russian. 

Of course Fred and Elise showed signs of despair, 
but the despair of the one melting into the despair 
of the other brought to both hope, courage, even 
joy! Indeed, their misfortune might be regarded 
as a stroke of luck; Fred probably thinks he would 
never have won his fair Elise without such a turn of 
events : I suppose Elise has persuaded him of that by 
now. 

They went back to the boat, as if there was no 
other place to go to. Fred borrowed blankets from 



98 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the caretaker there, and he made up a bed in the 
second-class, and she in the first-class, at opposite 
ends of the boat. I can imagine that the common 
danger did not take the edge off the usual ardor of 
their " spooning," as they walked this night on top 
the boat in the moonlight. This night, there was no 
one below for their footsteps to disturb, provoking 
later reference. 

In the morning they found a Russian formerly in 
the service of the Association. He helped them to 
get united in a Bolshevik marriage. As you may 
guess, this consisted of the barest declarations before 
a magistrate. It is hard to believe that Fred would 
consent to such an outlandish thing. It shows how 
much Fred had changed; he had indeed caught up 
with the times! Having gone that much off the 
beaten track, he did not go directly back; having 
followed one bypath at random, he followed another I 

Jokingly, several of us had discussed while at 
Nishni the feasibility of walking over to the Czech 
lines. Fred had not been one of these several: this 
wasn't exactly his kind of humor. But now in all 
reality these newly-weds undertook the " walking 
trip." They might have thought to overtake us at 
Moscow or Petrograd. They could have done so. 
But I suppose they had ceased to think of us. Prob- 
ably they were glad to be rid of us ; we had poked 
such fun at them ; as people will poke fun at lovers. 

The pair had roubles enough between them ; Fred, 
a good many, I think. They bought two knapsacks 



SMASHING THE LINES 99 

and light provisions and set out. From village to 
village they progressed, by hired conveyances where 
possible. They bought food and slept, as it was 
most convenient. I suppose they did not care how 
long or how difficult their j ourney was — why worry 
away a honeymoon? 

It was inevitable that they should become recog- 
nized as foreigners. Several Bolshevik soldiers were 
sent to arrest them. Luckily the Bolshevik in charge 
was an officer of the old army, and instead of arrest- 
ing them, he actually put them across the lines. The 
Red Army is full of such fellows, men serving for a 
livelihood, or serving to aid at the proper moment 
in the counter-revolution. I have every reason to 
believe that there are wide-spread plots to restore a 
more or less conservative government, and that the 
conspirators are putting their men in positions where 
they can forward the counter-revolution from inside 
the Bolshevik army, itself ! Such a pseudo- 
Bolshevik was the commissar in re Fred Ness 
and wife ! And this same fellow coming on some mis- 
sion intrusted to him by the Proletarian leaders, to 
Petrograd, while we were detained there before being 
granted permission to leave Russia via Finland — 
told a diplomat on our train, and the diplomat told 
us, this termination or climax, of the story of Fred 
and Elise. This seems to me one of the most remark- 
able things I have known in Russia. For I think I 
know the characters of Fred and Elise, and they 
acted contrary to their characters : they acted like 



100 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

genuine Russians. The fact remains that they alone 
of the lot of us did smash the lines and are now safely 
on the other side, already giving succor to our allies, 
while we travel half-way round the world to be in a 
position to do so. 



SUNLESS KOLA 

While we were comforting and regaling ourselves 
in Stockholm, after getting out of Soviet Russia, 
news came that our party of American Y. M. C. A. 
war secretaries was to go to North Russia in the 
vicinity of Archangel or Murmansk. Immediately 
I saw in prospect a house of ice and a hibernating 
life like that of an Eskimo. What else could one 
expect two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle ! 
And never was this particular error of my geograph- 
ical imagination entirely corrected till a year later 
when, outside Russia altogether, I came across a 
comparative table of Russian temperatures and 
learned that the average winter temperature of 
Archangel was only a fraction of a degree colder 
than that of Kazan a thousand miles to the south; 
moreover, at Kola, where I spent my winter, our 
proximity to the gulf-stream must have raised our 
average temperature several degrees above that of 
Archangel. 

On the way to our destined hibernation, Birkhaug 
and I were diverted for three weeks to the Nor- 
wegian town of Kirkenes at the northern terminus 
of the coast-line steamers. A large majority of the 
population of Kirkenes were workers for a German- 
owned iron mine that during the war was being 

101 



102 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

worked only at a minimum rate. The spirit of that 
town was modern, in spite of its being at a land's-end : 
it was a world unto itself, and distinctly a labor 
world. The miners had their own newspaper, co- 
operative store, and club. The editor of their social- 
ist newspaper was their preacher and legislator. In 
a funeral sermon over the body of a young man from 
the town who had been one of the many victims of an 
epidemic raging at a camp among those doing their 
two years of military service, this editor made a 
violent attack on military conscription. All of this 
violent preacher's flock were Bolshevik Socialists; 
there were many such flocks in Norway, I was led 
to believe. One of the few ladies in the place in- 
formed me in a tone of horror that all the housemaids 
in Norway belonged to a union. 

That bleak town nestled in a hollow among high 
rocks jutting into the Arctic Sea had a physical 
fascination for me. I roamed the high rocks often. 
Just those cliffs, the sea, and the sunshine provided 
for me great wild beauty ; such as I had only imag- 
ined before; it helped me to understand what fed 
the imagination of Bjornson in the creation of those 
imperishable stories of his. There was one small 
meadow in the place, and some of the vegetable 
gardens, though frosted, were still green in October. 

These weeks among the desolate rocks, and among 
the hardy, Bolshevik Norwegians prepared me for 
the bleakness of North Russia and for the simple, 
kindly Russian folks of Kola, much gayer than their 
Norwegian brethren across the border. Villagers 



SUNLESS KOLA 103 

passing along the main wooden sidewalk of Kola were 
never too cold to stop for a greeting, usually cheer- 
ful and often ample. For two months those Russians 
lived absolutely without sight of the sun, and some 
days with the moon yellow at midday. In such a 
country a sunny face has Its value. 

Kola, nine miles from Murmansk, at the end of 
Kola Bay, under Telegraph Hill, was, before the 
advent of the railroad and the growth of Murmansk, 
the port town of the region, and what trading the 
sparse population needed was effected here, chiefly 
with Norwegians. It was this town a British fleet 
attacked during the Crimean War. Townspeople 
will point to you to-day signs of the damage done 
the village by that bombardment. 

British troops then, 1918-1919, were again at 
Kola ; in coats of a different color, but with the same 
British hearts beating underneath ; and British coat 
and heart aroused, no doubt, the same feelings In the 
native population of 1850 as I witnessed aroused 
seventy years later. At the village of Kola was the 
British (and Allied) headquarters of the northern 
half of the Murmansk military district. Here were 
stationed a regiment or two of British troops, and a 
full battalion of Italians. Practically all the sol- 
diers were quartered In hastily-erected barracks at 
Kola Station, two miles from the village. 

The presence of such a host of foreign visitors 
made me feel less distant from the moving world of 
humanity, less as if connected with a party for polar 
exploration. Life moved fast in Kola, for Kola. 



104 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Wireless messages from the western front, and later 
from Paris, were received daily. We knew critical 
news as soon as Londoners, but we had to wait from 
three to four weeks for London newspapers, to know 
those small straws of information that show the way 
the wind is blowing, and without which critical news 
loses force and meaning. We learned, for example, 
that the Republicans had captured the American 
Congressional elections, but we couldn't know why: 
whether it meant Wilson had grown unpopular, that 
the war was unpopular, or that a domestic policy had 
discredited the administration. News came of the 
overwhelming defeat of the Independent-Liberal and 
Labor parties in England, but the election figures 
told no story. And it is story, after all, that makes 
political facts interesting, not the facts themselves. 
People who read only political headlines in their 
newspapers, naturally cannot enjoy the game of 
politics, nor, in the long run — if you will pardon 
an American for saying so — can they vote in- 
telligently. 

The news of the armistice brought the same per- 
sonal tremors in Kola that it brought in London or 
New York, though our public demonstration of our 
feelings of relief was quite humble. Kola's celebra- 
tion and mine happened November 12, according to 
orders from headquarters, in this way. At ten the 
troops marched behind the excellent band of the 
Italians through the village, with a review in front 
of the church. I had a Stars and Stripes packed 
at the bottom of one of 50 unpacked parcels, and by 



SUNLESS "KOLA 105 

the time, after a tearing search, I had guessed the 
right parcel, it was too late to have it present at the 
review; but, brought to the light, it served, at any 
rate, to proclaim Americanism to the village, being 
hung on a pole atop a high fence, just beneath, — as 
was right and fitting — my landlord's Russian flag. 
There was a Te Deum at the church, a thanksgiving 
for the advent of peace, or, at least, of the ceasing of 
formal warfare. Then for four solid hours, in a 
lusty and a carefree Russian way, the church bells 
wer^ rung. I saw the boys, five or six, up there in 
the belf r}'^, dressed in warm hats and mittens, pulling 
the tonglies of the bells with ropes. 

Bells of Russia! 

Flute, drum and fiddle. 

Staccato and succulent. 

Sweet and somnolent, 

And always musical: 

Most melodious bells of gay-sad Russia! 

That church tower, even when silent as well, rang 
out a message of its own. On top of it was a huge 
green dome, surmounted by a small gilded dome and 
gilded rod. These colors made warm the landscape 
for miles around, and the white of the church's high 
walls was a rallying point for the bright colors of the 
other buildings of the village to cluster about. The 
C. O. (commanding officer) invited some Russian 
dignitary to lunch, and chatted with him decorously 
in Russian (here was one English officer who could 
speak, and speak well, the native language). This 



106 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

representative native had plenty of beard, which 
appeared most flourishing when he raised a glass of 
the mess's best whiskey to his lips. He wore proudly 
a decent suit of 'black clothes that did not allow for 
his corpulence, and he was as gracious and cere- 
monious as a Russian may be. I suppose the C. O. 
was delineating what a future lies in store for Russia 
when order finally comes in its affairs. 

In the afternoon I followed a beckoning white road 
into the hills. I passed English soldiers at a game 
of football, beating their arms to keep warm as they 
ran. A long stretch of water, steel^'-blue, ran up out 
of sight among the hills where the sun was setting. 
I returned through the village streets. The houses, 
generally built of hewn logs, look like blockhouses; 
they have little windows, the lines of many of them 
are aslant; and there is usually a high board fence 
with a wide gate, enclosing their yards. Women in 
the thinnest clothes and no stockings were crossing 
the yards. Mischievous-looking children were play- 
ing at the street-corners. At a shrine down on the 
peninsula-end, at the head of the village, where there 
are a large wooden cross, six feet high, under a wooden 
canopy, and a tiny chapel with two bells hung out- 
side, I met a group of boys playing. They teased me 
for cigarettes. I asked them what the white cross 
was for. They said it was Boog (God). They 
spoke neither seriously nor mockingly. 

In the evening was a dinner at Kola Station for 
the Allied officers and their guests. All the Allies 



SUNLESS KOLA 107 

were toasted in turn. For Russia, spoke up Engi- 
neer KozevnekofF, thereafter nicknamed " The Father 
of Humanity," urging international fraternity, and 
so forth ! " Bas les Boshes ! Bas les Boshes ! " came 
the cry, quite good-naturedly, from all the diners. 
The Father of Humanity was outvoted in this league 
of nations ; and giving an unexpected brotherly kiss 
to Padre Rawson, he accepted with resignation the 
positive check his extreme humanitarianism had re- 
ceived. 

Old Kozevnekoff had a witty way of putting his 
points that entitled him to considerable license. 
Here are instances of his wit ; the man is worth the 
digression. He was having tea with the machine gun 
oflScers one day and took an especial liking to the 
com syrup. " Let me try a combination," he ex- 
claimed, his wolfish eyes twinkling. And he was 
permitted to spread first butter, then jam, then 
syrup, on a Huntley & Palmer biscuit. Raising it 
before the mess in the candle-light, he made his point 
with deliberate preciseness. " See here the butter, 
the jam, the syrup on this biscuit — the four Allies, 
three on the back of the biggest (Russia) ! " An- 
other day he was inquiring of some Y. M. C. A. secre- 
taries if the Russian civilians might buy at their can- 
teens. " Sorry, no ! " they replied with careful con- 
cern ; " we are forbidden to sell except to soldiers." 
" And may the Russian soldiers buy from you? " he 
inquired further. " Certainly, the Russian soldiers 
will be treated exactly as the other Allied troops." 



108 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

" Then," commented Kozevnekoff, briefly, " it will be 
necessary for the civilian to be acquainted with a 
Russian soldier ! " 

After dinner, as the strange end to the day of 
celebration, came the evening telegram sheet with the 
news that the old German government had been com- 
pletely overturned and that a new cabinet had been 
formed of three Majority and three Independent 
Socialists. This news might raise questions in the 
imaginative mind. Such things, it was possible, 
might affect vitally that very victory we had just 
celebrated. But such questioning, if there were any, 
— perhaps some minds cannot conceive of any revo- 
lution until it is an accomplished fact ! — held no 
serious place in the minds of the officers of the gar- 
rison, then jubilant and far from sober. The next 
day and the next day following, their minds were 
occupied, on the one hand, with matters of admin- 
istrative detail, and, on the other, with the day's 
sport or the week's dance. 

That was an ideal country for skiing. Officers 
went about their tasks on skis; they made the jour- 
ney to Murmansk that way. A mobile column, call- 
ing for the enlistment of sportsmen, was trained to 
be of military service on skis. 

The town boys seemed most proficient in the sport. 
Their skis were home-made, often as rude as barrel 
staves, and one ski seemed to be as good as two. 
They would also toboggan downhill on every descrip- 
tion of a box. Their swiftest way of getting about 
town was on skates. 



SUNLESS KOLA 109 

The prize stunt was to obtain the chance to drive 
to Rustikent by reindeer teams. That was rapid 
travel, indeed; scaling the sides of steep hills and 
crossing country where roads could never be. It is 
a pretty^ sight to see a team of reindeer swinging 
along in open country ; it is a thrilling experience 
to be so carried. The reindeer will travel 24 hours 
at a stretch without rest or food. The caryosas in 
which persons are carried for such a cross-co.untry 
journey are in size and appearance like a light boat; 
several are tied together, and are pulled in a string 
by a team of several animals. Often one of the 
caryosas is caught by a tree or bush and broken off 
from the team; often this light carriage is tipped 
over with all its contents. On the Rustikent trip, the 
whole party is put up on one night in a small shack 
already densely populated with a native family or 
two; if properly equipped, it may bivouac in the 
snow. When after a journey of two or three days 
the traveler arrives at Rustikent, he is entertained by 
the widowed Queen of the Lapps, who wears the most 
exquisite furs, and who makes him the most liberal 
presents (to be returned, of course, with presents of 
greater value in her eyes). For this northern queen 
is wealthy: she owns many herds of reindeer; her 
rule, as the rule of a modern sovereign should be, is 
based upon economic supremacy. But the foreign 
pilgrims, no matter of what rank, are given the honor 
of playing cards with her, and following such inti- 
macies are permitted before departure to put her on 
their kodak films in her most queenly furs. In Rus- 



110 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

tikent, the Lapp capital, are 1500 people in winter. 
These people would give the most valuable furs, 
boots, and slippers for small value in the food or lux- 
uries of foreign pilgrims, and, no doubt, considered 
the exchange highly advantageous to themselves. 
The English officers, however, who were dealing regu- 
larly with them in an official way, tried to fix a fair 
rate of exchange upon a money basis. 

I spent most of my time indoors, where my work 
was. Our Y. M. C. A. was quartered in a fine look- 
ing log house of one story, built high from the 
ground. The canteen occupied the two spacious 
rooms on front; here we permitted to meet in the 
daytime some of the classes of the village school 
driven from their own building because of its requisi- 
tion. Besides the two front rooms, we had a small 
class- room, and a kitchen, where we made the can- 
teen drinks and also held classes. In a pinch; and 
I had a comfortable room there, kept warm by a large 
Russian oven stove, constructed on the principle of 
preserved heat ; a fire was built In It once every 24 
hours in the coldest weather ; and then when the 
fire was doAvn to embers, the stove was closed off from 
the chimney, thus shutting the heat in the stove. 
The canteen's greatest attraction was a gramophone 
and set of records, both far better than the average, 
which Tom, Dick and Harry ran to his own liking; 
with the consequence that the machine often went on 
a strike ; fortunately, however, there was always some 
Tom about to mend it. At the canteen coimter we 
sold when we had them, coffee, biscuits (Huntley & 



SUNLESS KOLA 111 

Palmer's sweet biscuits), soap, soup, candle's, ciga- 
rettes, ajid darning cotton. Our supplies were so lim- 
ited and so spasmodically forwarded that we could 
permit no soldier to purchase at one time more than a 
half paclcet of biscuits, one packet of cigarettes, or 
one cake of soap. Even if we had had the stock of a 
Wanamaker's, we should have sold it out too quickly : 
the soldiers had no other place to spend their money. 

My especial part of the divided Y. M. C. A. labor 
of the Kola district was the direction of the educa- 
tional classes at the village and at the station. The 
Russian inhabitants flocked to our school and took 
what it off^ered greedily, but the soldiers had, after 
a taste, their own opinion about the excitement of 
learning Russian. The officers stuck to study more 
resolutely, particularly where the teacher was a rep- 
resentative of Russia's keen young women. All the 
feverish activity about these novel classes of ours 
appears to me now but an idle flourish. Yet hidden 
currents in the camp life were touched by this educa- 
tional eff^ervescence, and while it gave these currents 
no permanent outlet, it quickened them a little and 
kept them moving, perhaps to find a worthy outlet 
later in peace days. Trivial education is better than 
none at all. At least, it makes for educational ap- 
pearances, and these in turn make an environment 
in which serious educational activity may originate. 

The waters of social life at Kola were more deeply 
stirred. Here we had the willing assistance of those 
never-to-be-forgotten native young women — barish- 
nas. They did their bit at the officers' parties ; they 



112 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RU-SSIA 

came out in smaller, but still in loyal, numbers at 
the dances for soldiers. The York regiment oper- 
ated a vaudeville circuit along the line of the rail- 
road in the occupied area, and there was intense com- 
petition for membership in the party, for it meant a 
trip down the line in the special concert train and 
relief from all other duties. When these entertainers 
gave one of their performances at Kola, the Italian 
section of the audience was so captivated by the ap- 
pearance of one of the performers taking the part of 
a nurse that several of them crowded about the stage 
door during the intermission to serenade her. 
Every one was involved sooner or later in an extempo- 
raneous concert ; it did not matter what he did ; only 
he had to have a part. The Roman Catholic Padre 
borrowed the use of the canteen for a social gather- 
ing of his flock one Sunday afternoon, and it was 
philosophically amusing to see how bravely each sol- 
dier, as he was called up in turn, did his bit ; although 
probably these efforts cost some of them as great 
torture as I knew it was causing some of their 
auditors. 

Special pains were taken by the junior officers 
to keep their seniors entertained, above all, the 
General. Serafima — a bright-eyed, sweetly-petite 
graduate of the Archangel Gymnasium, who wore an 
adorable coat of soft, reddish-brown young reindeer 
skin, with hat to match, — was engaged to give the 
General expert advice on matters pertaining to the 
Russian language (the General wa^s not the C. 0. who 
had the representative Russian citizen to lunch in 



SUNLESS KOLA 113 

celebration of the armistice) . Petrozavodsk Marusa, 
a handsome though pouty girl of only sixteen such 
winters, was had to headquarters dinner, under the 
chaperonage of her rather bibulous parents — a 
necessary evil; great use was found, also, for Bol- 
shevik Mary, in spite of her suspiciously precise Ger- 
man, for, although she was a large enough woman 
to shake the floor of some houses at small Russian 
dances, she possessed, indubitably, grace in her steps, 
and, probably, music in her soul, with which to be- 
guile his sir-ship, the General, at the officers' dances. 
The Kola I knew was socially a contrast to the 
labor-society of Kirkenes, Norway. !Bolshevik-Soci- 
ety had vanished from Kola a few months before my 
arrival, and during my stay only Bourgeoisie-Society 
flourished, guided and purified by the several leading 
families. The two richest men in Kola were mer- 
chants. The richest, Kukin, had made his money in 
Norwegian trade. In Czarist days, as he boasted, 
he had entertained Petrograd friends in his house. 
Now his outstanding, well-built house had been 
requisitioned for headquarters, and Lady Kukin ex- 
pressed with tears in her eyes her rage at seeing the 
damage her home suff"ered by occupation of English 
officers. I felt the malicious prompting to ask her 
if she had prospered better than this during Bol- 
shevik days — if she hadn't lost use of her house, in 
large part, if not altogether. At Murmansk, the 
great lady of the town was the widow of the admiral 
whose sailors had murdered him in the harbor. She 
mourned her husband profoundly. She declared to 



114* SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

me that she should always, till her death, live in Mur- 
mansk — the scene of his last tragic days and his 
burial place. She was indeed a beautiful, accom- 
plished, and haughty person. Nevertheless financial 
embarrassments compelled her to tutor Allied officers 
in languages ; and what a tang her reluctance must 
have given at every lesson to the British or French 
conqueror-student ! 

Christmas provided an excuse for heightened 
socialibity. The Russian Christmas, by coming ac- 
cording to the church calendar thirteen days after 
ours, made possible a prolonged holiday festivity and 
a thorough exchange of holiday courtesies. We ar- 
ranged our big party for Christmas night. The hall 
chosen for this gala occasion had the insalubrious 
name, " The Horse Barns," owing to the fact that 
French cavalry had been quartered there the previ- 
ous summer. The circumstance, so a trusty Russian 
acquaintance informed me, somewhat handicapped us 
at the start; but it was still possible to make the 
party a success, he said, by a judicious issue of the 
invitations ; if, however, one of the village families 
not considered " nice " were invited, the " nice " peo- 
ple would hear of it and not come. One further 
caution : if the Russians saw so much as one of their 
hosts beginning to be drunk, they would immediately 
be escorting their daughters to the coat room. Con- 
sequently, on Christmas evening our committee were 
waiting in the festooned " Horse Barns " very nerv- 
ously for the first guests. These appeared, finally, 
with disarming smiles. Captain Helmholtz and his 



SUNLESS KOLA 115 

wife, German-Russian refugees from Riga — our 
principal guests. At that moment a group of three 
or four Tommies who had not refused their Christmas 
rum ration, nor any of the liquor extras for the day, 
spontaneously decided to dance a jig noisily in a 
corner lighted with a large festive candelabrum. 
They executed their decision instantly. Swiftly, as 
if on wings, Lieutenant Bull of the Committee moved 
across the hall and quieted this inopportune, and, as 
it turned out, this isolated, case of super-abundance 
of spirits ; but, too late ! Captain Helmholtz and 
family had vanished. Worse luck, they met other 
members of the gentry just outside and gave them 
reason for retracing their steps. Then, rather than 
let our whole party go by default, we admitted some 
of the villagers not so " nice " who were loitering 
shamelessly about the building. 

The Russians began their " Rojestvo " at three 
A. M. with the ringing of the church bells and a 
service. I enj oy ed the bells only — in bed ! I was 
awakened a few hours later by a peculiar sound that 
seemed at first like the music of bag-pipes. It was 
Christmas music sung by several children in the 
rooms of my landlord. They soon came into my 
room, faced my icon, an image such as all good 
Russians hang high up in a corner of every room, 
and sang, bowing to the icon, and twirling a little 
wheel, made to represent the Star of the East, and 
decorated with bright bands of paper and pictures 
of the old Emperor and Empress. Later in the 
morning I called on some of the villagers. I found 



116 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

them all dressed in their best clothes, abjuring all 
work whatsoever, and entertaining their kinsfolk 
and friends around the tea table. Their cakes, of 
many kinds, were made from sugar saved from ra- 
tions over a long period, and, in the houses of the 
rich, of sugar bought privately from Allied sources. 
Their Christmas was not done up in any hurry. 
There were the first, the second, the third, the fourth 
days — clear, unadulterated holidays ! On the third 
day, the day after Christmas, came the big fete for 
the children of the village, held that year in the large 
hall of the Y. M. C. A. building at Kola Station ; in 
the evening was a spectacle (Russian play), and from 
midnight to seven in the morning was a grand ball. 
All the dances at this time of the year are mas- 
querades. A dozen or two masked friends will call 
on you at any hour of the night and request the 
pleasure of dancing in your house. They resemble 
bears, donkeys, fish, brigands and cut-throats. You 
ask if they are good people. They reply they are. 
They dance violently and recklessly — as the crea- 
tures they resemble might disport themselves ; you 
give them to eat and to drink; they move on to an- 
other house. The tree (Yolka) is the important 
thing for grown-ups as weU as for children. I saw 
several men bringing their tree from the hillside on 
the First Day of Christmas. This same day they 
also decorate it. On the following day, after the 
Christmas morning service, they light it with the tiny 
church candles they have brought home with them. 
It remains by law for two weeks; the children pray 



SUNLESS KOLA 117 

clamorously to have it remain longer, and to the joy 
of all it remains another week. 

So Christmas is over, the big holiday of the year ; 
and none too important in sunless Kola, as a means 
of keeping the children and the grown-ups happy in 
the dark winter months. Everybody seemed sorry 
to have Christmas all over; there came no sigh of 
relief to these folks at the end of their holiday 
engagements, as comes to us who plan Christmas 
more ambitiously. Their efforts for Christmas are 
natural; they take time to enjoy their Christmas. 
The Allied military control would not allow the 
Russians working for them to take off their usual 
number of days to celebrate on; thus was the cor- 
ruption of civilization felt that Christmas at Kola. 
But the chief Christmas customs of the people were 
observed in spite of the presence of a higher civil- 
ization. I doubt if any Czar or any Lenin could 
suddenly obliterate these. Next Christmas may be 
a Bolshevik Christmas in Kola, but it will differ 
little from the one I saw there. Such holiday cus- 
toms of the people will prevail, pretty much un- 
changed, for some time to come, whoever makes the 
decrees at Moscow. A month after Christmas will 
come a week when all feast and eat bleenies (griddle 
cakes). Then will come Lent, when all religious 
Russians fast rigidly. There will come in its turn 
the Day of the Baptism when the priest, followed by 
the whole village, will take the chief icon of the 
church along a path marked by cut fir trees, to the 
river, and here, under a canopy specially erected, 



118 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the priest will dip the icon through a hole that has 
been cut in the ice, into the running water — all as 
a symbol of renewing life, of the perennial washing 
away of the old. 

So every year Russia shakes off her old sins, and, 
in hope, in freshness, looks to the future. Habits 
of faith in the Russian people like this one will never 
be rooted out. Russia will he clean some day. And 
then may she help some of the other people who cling 
more fondly to their past, and consequently have 
less faith in their power to renew themselves. 



JOHN BULL IN NORTH RUSSIA 

Arctic Russia was a strange country for twenty 
thousand or more English.soldiers to be set down in ; 
but it was only a short time before they had made 
the place theirs. Too lazy to learn Russian, they 
made themselves understood with interpreters. To 
lend dignity to this indirect communication the in- 
terpreters were made sergeants. I knew three pri- 
vates who obtained stripes in this way. I saw half a 
village evacuated for troops, and to increase the 
accommodations, rows of wooden shacks with walls 
of two thicknesses filled with dirt, hastily built. 
Stoves were brought in, bunks built. Orders were 
issued to keep everything and everybody sanitary. 
So many men were detached for the fuel service, so 
many for the water service. My Y. M. C. A. hut 
in Kola village was furnished promptly with wood 
and water as one of the army institutions. The 
water-man's sled covered with ice rapidly forming 
as the water spilled over the side of the barrel, came 
creaking to our back door about nine in the morning. 

The officers were a cheerful lot of fellows, all fit. 
As soon as they arrived in the place, they were think- 
ing of shooting and skiing. There wasn't much 
game in our immediate vicinity, but officers coming 
new to the place would go out with their guns some 

119 



120 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

morning to make sure of this fact. Skiing remained 
excellent all winter. Little snow fell, but this never 
melted once till April. Although two hundred miles 
within the Arctic Circle, thanks to the influence of 
the Gulf Stream, the average temperature, Fahren- 
heit, was above zero, and Kola Bay always lay before 
us as an unfrozen feature of the place. The officers 
often went back and forth on skis between Kola 
Station and the village, army headquarters. They 
wore sweaters under their tunics, a long woolen scarf, 
a handsome fur hat, but generally no overcoat. 
Their buttons, belt, and boots glistened. They 
should have impressed the population. They did 
outclass the Italian officers who in appearance are 
not easy to distinguish from their soldiers. 

The chief task of the officers, up there 500 miles 
from the front, was to look after their men. This 
they did well, for the most part. They were solicit- 
ous, too, that Tommy should have his entertainment ; 
otherwise he might become discontented. At first 
some C. O.'s were lukewarm, if not hostile, to the 
efforts of the Y. M. C. A., but in time the sort of 
service rendered by the Y. M. C. A. came to be 
appreciated ; so much so, in fact, that a welfare offi- 
cer was appointed for the district and attached to 
the general staff. 

The evenings were long, especially so to the officers, 
who did not have to rise early. In midwinter lamps 
were lighted from three to four o'clock. Tea came 
at four-thirty ; a good dinner, with abundant liquor, 
at seven-thirty, prepared by tested soldier-cooks. 



JOHN BULL IN NORTH RUSSIA 121 

The officer messes could procure certain extras from 
the Army Service Corps such as plum pudding, 
canned vegetables and fruits. After dinner was a 
game of cards or conversation enlivened with a gram- 
ophone. The choice of the evening's diversion lay 
with the C. 0. (commanding officer). If he wished 
to play bndge, bridge it was ; if he preferred to go 
out skiing in view of the northern lights or the north- 
em moonlight, with the Russian women, his officers 
must accompany him. 

Occasionally there was a dance for officers at 
Kola Station in the Y. M. C. A.'s huge building, 
erected by aid of the soldiers, and kept warm by 
eight brick ovens. At first these dances were held 
on Sunday evening, following the Russian customs, 
but when the Yorks came into camp, their chaplain 
put his foot down and declared the Russians should 
observe Sunday in our way, not we in theirs. The 
Italians outshone the English in dancing; they 
danced with each other if there were not girls enough 
to go round; few of the English danced. The most 
memorable of these affairs was the masquerade party 
after the Russian Christmas celebrations were over, 
when the inhabitants appeared in clever disguises 

and in their merriest mood. Captain P was so 

enthralled by one of the disguised fair ones that he 
took her to his shack between dances and offered her 
chocolate, the greatest luxury to the Russian ladies. 
But when he gallantly tried to kiss her, she unmasked 
and showed herself a soft-voiced boy of nineteen. 

These Englishmen talked chiefly about their war 



122 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

experiences in France. They were not particularly 
concerned to know why the government was keeping 
them in Russia after the armistice. One officer, irri- 
tated at the time upon receiving news that his 
battalion should move on as reenforcements to Arch- 
angel, exclaimed : " This expedition is nothing but a 
capitalists' scheme to get a hand on the mines of 
Russia " (as it happens there are rich mineral de- 
posits all untouched in the hills around Murmansk). 
This remark came more or less off the top of the 
brain, but the following remark of another officer 
was well considered : " Of course I know very well 
w^hat we are here for. I, as an English officer, am 
here in the interest of England, in the interest of 
England's prosperity. For I am a regular-army 
man: we cannot have an army without money, and 
we as a nation cannot have money without an army 
to fight for it." " But," I asked, " do you believe 
the Italians and French are here also in the financial 
interest of their countries? " " Certainly," he re- 
sponded. " And how about the Americans ? " I put 
the question ; " don't you believe in the sincerity of 
Wilson with his fourteen points ? " " Very likely 
he is sincere," replied the officer ; " perhaps our 
Lloyd-George is sincere also, but, when all is said, 
we know our politicians are only the tools of our 
business men, the real rulers." There was no beat- 
ing about the bush with this man, no phrase-making. 
He, like many others, believed that the way to settle 
the Russian question was by force. 

They considered the Russian too weak to decide 



JOHN BULL IN NORTH RUSSIA 123 

his own destinies. This notion that certain people 
are born without capacity for self-government is not 
a stock idea of English military men alone. Mr. 
Dillon, a well-known English writer about Russia, 
has written a book of TOO pages to prove that the 
Russian is not fit for self-government. I had this 
Mr. Dillon quoted to me. He was a convenient 
authority at the moment. Convenient authorities 
have been found to prove the Irish, the Indians, the 
Egyptians unfit for self-government. 

They told me the Russian was no fighter, that that 
fact was made clear in the war. They told me the 
Italians were cowards. They reported that one of 
the American regiments at Archangel was below par 
because made up of Detroit immigrants, and that 
for this reason the English at Murmansk were 
obliged to send over reenforcements to Archangel. 

There were four thousand Italians at the Kola 
camp under a major of their own, but subject to 
suggestions of the English C. O. Only one English 
C. O. was ever really successful in maintaining the 
entente cordiale with them. His secret as told to one 
of his subalterns was this : " I find it best to give 
way in all small matters, and in any important mat- 
ter the Italians will be rather happy than not in see- 
ing my way of looking at it." 

Tommy rose above his environment almost as 
heartily and as irrepressibly as his officer. The 
soldiers were getting enough to eat that winter, 
though they told me that the previous summer they 
were working hard on less than half rations. The 



124? SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

British army rations were uniformly good. The 
cereal, bacon, jam and cheese were never an inferior 
article. By Christmas, all the winter clothing for 
the troops had arrived. Their high white hats faced 
with black fur were imposing. Every soldier was 
required to wear the Shackleton arctic boots, but 
the warmest foot-wear for that climate to my think- 
ing were valenkis, the felt boots worn by the inhabit- 
ants. Tommy had almost as little use for the Rus- 
sian as his officer. His chief relation to the natives 
was to " skolko," the Russian term meaning " how 
much." In the beginning a brisk trade sprang up in 
cigarettes and rum, the Russians' supply of these 
articles being just what they could obtain from the 
army. The evil increased till made the subject of an 
army order threatening " skolkoers " with loss of 
leave to England (there had been no leave up to that 
time). 

The men were thinking of England much more 
than of Russia. Mail day was the big day; then 
there was something more pleasant than routine to 
think about. Everybody wanted to go home. For 
this reason, and for any other imaginable, as always 
where John Bull plants himself, the men groused 
(i. e., complained) and groused, using the same 
idioms for this purpose that I heard at the officer 
messes. Their complaints were generally criticisms 
of administrative acts that directly concerned them ; 
they seldom showed any interest in war causes and 
results, and very little interest in the progress of 
the peace-treaty; Editor Bottomly's anecdotal in- 



JOHN BULL IN NORTH RUSSIA 125 

terpretation of current events satisfied them. Now 
and again one would hear a soldier remark succinctly 
and conclusively that when Russia paid over her debt 
to Great Britain, then they would be jolly well glad 
to leave that damned country. Stories of Bolshevik 
atrocities were readily credited. That Pandora tale 
of the nationalization of women, which was going 
the rounds of America and Europe, was doing duty 
up there also, being printed and distributed among 
all the soldiers. Other propaganda stuff was put 
before them. In among magazines sent out to the 
troops just about election time were hundreds of 
leaflets of The National Democratic Labor Party, 
lauding the government. One heard little of any 
cry " On to Petrograd ! " there was no genuine desire 
to fight the Bolsheviks. The remark was current 
that it would be a shame to lose one's life fighting 
the miserable Bolsheviks, after getting out of the 
Great War safely. 



WHAT THE ALLIES ACCOMPLISHED 
IN NORTH RUSSIA 

It was a blind alley the expedition to North Russia 
led into ! The soldiers felt tha,t they had been shoved 
off civilization upon this cold and dark end of the 
universe and forgotten. And some of the officers 
felt that all their efforts were certain to be frus- 
trated. We in the Y. M. C. A. were busy dissem- 
inating good cheer at canteen counters and on en- 
tertainment stages, but in the course of it all there 
was for us as detached and somewhat independent 
persons, perhaps an exceptional opportunity of talk- 
ing straight and honestly with different ranks, with 
representatives of the different Allied corps, and — • 
for those of us who spoke mutilated Russian — with 
the military and civilian Russians. 

It was natural for members of the expedition to 
wonder about the reasons of the Supreme Council of 
Ten in keeping them in Russia after the armistice. 
Some thought they were there to ensure payment of 
Russia's debts to England and France. Others, 
especially officers, frankly concluded that it was to 
restore " order " to " distracted " Russia. 

The Allies landed at Murmansk on the invitation 
of the local Soviet. This silly Soviet was forth- 
with excommunicated by the Moscow All-Russian 

Soviet, and, shortly after, was shown the door by its 

126 



WHAT THE ALLIES ACCOMPLISHED 127 

whilom guests. At Archangel, according to the tes- 
timony of Mr. Young, formerly British Consul there, 
the invitation to land was obtained after the Allies 
had taken the place and nominated a provisional 
government that should invite them. Then this 
complaisant body also quickly learned its standing 
by being kidnapped by some Russian militia and 
taken to an island in the White Sea, with the con- 
nivance, it was rumored, of certain elements of the 
Allied High Command. The American Ambassador 
forced the return of this government, but the work- 
men of Archangel went on a strike as a protest 
against the abduction. American soldiers helped to 
put down this strike, and all subsequent strikes, of 
which there were many. 

The Americans at Archangel had to do many 
things which they considered absolutely antithetical 
to the spirit in which they were supposed to have 
come into Russia. Frazer Hunt, who visited this 
front as correspondent of The Chicago Tribune, 
wrote that this was because the Americans were under 
British command. Even the Bolsheviki knew that 
the Americans had a different attitude toward the 
Russians from the British. A dough-boy who had 
spent the winter at Archangel told me that the Bol- 
sheviks would often refrain from attacking the 
Yanks, for some such reason. Once, he related, 
when the English relieved Americans from a post held 
by the latter for several weeks, during which the 
Bolsheviks had not fired a shot, the Reds made a 
strong attack that very night. 



128 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

At first there was considerable friction in the Mur- 
mansk district between the British command and the 
Y. M. C. A., which was then directed by Americans. 
The American workers were accused of spreading 
American propaganda. The object of our relief 
and educational work for the Russian population was 
misconstrued. One British officer losing his temper 
exclaimed to one of the Y. M. C. A. officials : " Well, 
perhaps consciously you are not doing any propa- 
ganda work, but just the same your government is 
using you as its agents." This incident is one illus- 
tration of the sensitiveness of the " army mind " to 
propaganda. Several such incidents impressed it 
upon me that the British army man in this war recog- 
nized the power and value of ideas and motives. The 
friction between the Italian and English officers was 
marked also ; their mutual distrust and dislike was 
general. These international jealousies were silly, 
and sound doubly so in print several thousand miles 
away, months later, but they, nevertheless, were un- 
deniably a vital factor in the lives of the troops and 
in the effectiveness of the expedition. 

The Bolshevik Finns who had escaped out of Fin- 
land with the German White Guard at their heels 
and had taken refuge with the Allied troops in the 
Murmansk district, presented a dilemma. They 
were promised when they came that the Allies would 
help them drive the Germans out of Finland. But 
when after the armistice the Allies supported the 
same White Finns that had called in German aid to 
put down the Finnish working people, explanation 



WHAT THE ALLIES ACCOMPLISHED 129 

to our Finnish Legion was awkward. The Finns 
went on a strike in March, intending to go back to 
Finland. General Maynard informed them that in 
order to avoid bloodshed he would not oppose their 
departure, but that any individuals found returning 
would be treated as deserters. After this the matter 
was patched up for the time. 

But the friction that counted most was the grow- 
ing hostility of the Russian soldiers and the Russian 
people to the expedition. The out-and-out Bol- 
sheviks were put under arrest at once. I came to 
know the oiRcer given charge of them. He explained 
that they were maintained as a gang of workmen- 
prisoners to do the hardest labor on the Murmansk 
quay. If they failed to carry out any orders, they 
were lashed. An Allied soldier went beside each 
prisoner and saw to it that he " worked.'* Learning 
all this I ventured a suggestion to the officer. *' Such 
a waste of time for the guards ; why couldn't the sol- 
diers work with the prisoners .^ " He promptly re- 
turned : *' Gad, the Tommy wouldn't do that heavy 
work ; they come out here as soldiers, not as a labor- 
battalion." 

Russians who were objectionable to the military 
were likely to be dubbed Bolshevik. A British officer 

described how two Russians at K suffered from 

this practice and his story was later corroborated by 

our Y. M. C. A. representative at K . The 

army owed both these Russians large sums on lumber 
contracts and apparently for no other reason they 
found themselves accused of being Bolsheviks. It 



130 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

was made so hot for one of them that he had to 
leave town without collecting his debt. 

General Maynard hated the sight of a " damned 
Russian " and would not have one in his office if he 
could help it. This was the attitude of some of the 
best officers. Generally the natives were treated by 
the British officers as inferiors, although in some 
quarters there were attempts made to please the 
populace. Many of those who disliked the Russian 
were happy enough to dance with his daughters ; 
moreover, they were quite put out if the Russian 
notabilities declined to come to the officer soirees, 
as was sometimes the case. I heard often an observa- 
tion, common under such circumstances, that " the 
Russian women are so much finer than the Russian 
men, you know ! " In one village it was definitely 
one of the duties of the interpreter, an English ser- 
geant, to call upon the families in a cheerful, friendly 
way; at headquarters' mess they used to joke about 
this diplomatic offensive, but I doubt if many 
Russians were taken in by it. The Italians and the 
French mixed more readily with the population than 
the English, and picked up quite a smattering of the 
language. 

Once there in the country that great illusion re- 
garding Russia that the people were waiting to be 
delivered and would flock by the thousands to our 
standard, was quickly dissipated. The officers and 
N. C. O.'s who were sent out purposely to train 
Russian recruits had to be assigned to other tasks: 
the local population in no sense ever rallied to us. 



WHAT THE ALLIES ACCOMPLISHED 131 

When this fact was realized, it was decided to mob- 
ilize the Russian men of the district. Of the con- 
scripts I knew, some Bolsheviks and some non-Bol- 
sheviks intended to walk over to the enemy whenever 
the chance offered. Accordingly, the revolt of Rus- 
sians at Onega the following summer was not a sur- 
prise to me. Americans who were at Archangel till 
mid-summer declared a majority of the Russian 
troops had gone over to the Red Army. 

Over at Murmansk I heard often of the Bolshevik 
atrocities at Archangel, but the men from there I 
asked about atrocities were pretty unanimous in 
denying that they existed. A prosperous merchant 
at Kola with whom I dined occasionally averred that 
the only way to settle Russia was to kill every Bol- 
shevik. " Every Bolshevik? " I expostulated. 
" Every Bolshevik ! " was his firm answer. There 
was atrocity in this man's mind, but I don't believe 
he would actually commit one. 

A few people like this merchant, who were pros- 
pering during the foreign occupation, feared what 
might happen to them and their property if the for- 
eign armies were withdrawn, but many Russian mod- 
erates were by degrees losing confidence in the AlHes 
there as they saw them taking counsel chiefly with the 
reactionary elements of the population. One prom- 
inent citizen at Murmansk who had been delighted to 
see the Allies land confided to a friend of mine that 
since he had seen how the AlHes treated the Russians, 
he doubted if there was much to choose between them 
and the Bolsheviks, And yet this fellow, belonging 



132 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

to another Russian party, hated the Bolsheviks 
cordially. 

As for the Bolsheviks themselves, they kept quiet. 
And for some reason I could not get bourgeois Rus- 
sians to tell me who the Bolsheviks of the village were. 
Ultimately, however, two good acquaintances who 
held positions of trust in the village, acknowledged 
themselves to me bona fide Bolsheviks. 



HONEY LOU 

AN IMAGINARY ADVENTURE AMONG 
THE LAPPS 

" Through the wilds of Lapland in a snow-dipping 
caryosa," is the way Major M , Evangelist, be- 
gan his story of a drive to a Lapp village. The 
country had no striking effect of wilderness upon me 
and I didn't ride in a caryosa ; I was driven in a 
roughly but strongly constructed sled already loaded 
with a month's rations for the driver. My driver 
apologized for his team of four reindeer even before I 
saw it: they were too old. He had thirty reindeer, 
all but these four too young to carry a sled : he was 
a poor Lapp. There are Lapps with several thou- 
sand reindeer ; these fellows are not only rich Lapps, 
they are rich men; a reindeer this winter (1918—19) 
is worth 90 dollars. My young driver had just re- 
turned from fighting in Roumania a year before and 
he proceeded to tell me a little about it as we slipped 
on through the falling snow (I cannot say " dashed, 
raced or hurtled through the earth's new white 
blanket" as would the Major; for it was hard go- 
ing: a warm day, new snow and wet snow). We had 
to jump off and walk at each incline and we made 
several stops to let the reindeer breathe and the 

driver smoke. 

133 



134 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Our journey was across a wide plateau between 
two river-valleys, from the Russian town of Kola to 
the Lapp village of Kildensky Pagost. The driver 
prodded his deer constantly with a fifteen-foot pole 
and sometimes ran up behind and shouted at them. 
That kept them moving. We went down all hills at 
top speed, skirting rocks and bushes ; I kept myself 
on the sled only by being braced; at such times the 
driver sang out something like 

" Mookie bearlie, sarkar, chai, 
Mookie bearlie, sarkar, chai, 
Mookie bearlie " 

a soldiers' song, he said. Finally we had the second 
valley in view across a lake. *' How do you get 
around this lake in summer? " I asked. " We don't 
live here in summer," he replied. " We fish on the 
inlet near Murmansk in summer. I don't, myself ; I 
tend reindeer on the tundras twenty versts to the east 
of here, where they feed." 

Upon our arrival at the village, all the shaggy 
wolf-dogs came out and yelped ill-manneredly at me 
as the driver took me to the higgledy-piggledy house 
where I was to stay for the night. In the corner of 
the first room was an open fireplace where metre- 
sticks of wood standing on end, blazed cheerily. 
Through the window I could see similar blazes in 
neighboring huts or houses ; I could see also brawny 
women chopping wood out-of-doors at the wood-pile. 
Except for this open fire everything in the place was 



HONEY LOU 135 

dingy and uninviting; not nearly so homelike as the 
interior of Russian cottages. In this first room lived 
a consumptive Lapp and his wife. The second room, 
reached only through the first, was fully occupied by 
two and a half families. A large oven stood in one 
corner; in two comers were wide curtain beds. I 
put down my bag and bed-roll in the remaining cor- 
ner, where there was a wooden wall-seat and the din- 
ing-table. The evening meal followed immediately. 
The Lapps had their songa (fish), plenty of bread, 
and tea made with boiling water from an unburnished 
samovar (you do not find unpolished samovars in 
well-regulated Russian households!). My host and 
hostess accepted without a murmur of my jam and 
biscuits, and, although it was the first week of the 
long fast before Easter, the host made good inroads 
into my bully-beef ; scarcely any of my off*erings were 
passed on by man and wife to the subordinate mem- 
bers of the household. 

The subordinate members of the household were, 
as I learned by asking, a small adopted daughter, 
the sister-in-law and her husband of two weeks, and 
another sister-in-law. This unmarried sister-in-law, 
Anna, spoke Russian excellently and had that native 
refinement which always accompanies generous high 
spirits. I say she had high spirits. She did not 
display them particularly as I saw her, but never- 
theless I know she had them, although at the time 
she seemed not to enjoy her good health, was very 
pale. I felt her looking sharply at me at times, as 
if the way I acted and talked struck a deep chord in 



136 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

her. She said little during tea. The young hus- 
band talked most. He wanted to tell me he had been 
in the big cities of Russia, in Moscow and Petrograd 
— had stopped over three days in Moscow when re- 
turning from his service in the army : it was a beau- 
tiful city, the women there were attractive; his wife 
did not relish this last remark. " And there is no 
such frost and winter there ! " I said. " Shouldn't 
you rather spend the winter in Moscow than here? " 
There was no hesitation in his reply, no weighing of 
pros and cons: "I should enjoy winter here, most. 
I am used to this winter ; I like it." " Better than 
summer, here?" I asked again. "Yes, I like our 
winter better than our summer I '* 

After tea the hozian (master of the house) de- 
parted to spend the night several miles off where his 
reindeer were herded. The three sisters began at 
once to sew skins industriously. Out of small pieces 
of fur they were making the handsome high boots 
that sold in Murmansk for 40 dollars a pair. The 
fur was matched very carefully and cut clean for 
the seam ; they used strong thread, drawn off from 
one of four large skeins hanging on a rod over the 
oven. The young husband sat very close to his 
wife, and now and again they whispered to each 
other in the Lapp language. Anna observed them 
each time they whispered out of the corner of her eye, 
just as I was doing. 

As I had come into the village I was wishing I had 
brought with me a gramophone the better to enter- 
tain both the Lapps and myself during the evening. 



HONEY LOU 137 

Imagine my surprise and delight to notice, on reach- 
ing to the floor to pick up a scrap of skin that had 
dropped from Anna's lap, a gramophone and some 
records resting on a small shelf built between the 
legs of the table. 

" Ah, you have a gramophone," I exclaimed to 
Anna. " The very thing ! Let us play it ! " 

" No," she said, simply, " no ! " 

" But, Anna," her older sister remonstrated, " you 
tnow you do play it every evening I " 

Anna resented her sister's interruption. " Well, 
never mind, I don't want to play it to-night ! " 

Not only my particular curiosity as to her reasons 
for not allowing us to have the gramophone music 
then, but also my general curiosity about this girl, 
were now thoroughly aroused. I could not press the 
point further then, but I resolved to find out some- 
thing about this mysterious, sad girl, who, with her 
native refinement, seemed rather out of place there 
in that rough Lapp village. 

I was restless ; I am accustomed after dinner to 
expect something especially diverting; I wanted 
something to happen so that my evening in a Lapp 
village might be the more memorable. Accordingly, 
I got up and went out into the other room of the 
house, where I found the consumptive man and his 
wife, a strongly-built termagant. He, like hen- 
pecked men generally, was most genial, and what with 
the conversation and the warmth and the cheeriness 
of the fire, I felt better. Some villagers had mean- 
time passed through into the big room, giving me my 



138 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

opportunity for the sort of entertainment I was 
after, and I hopefully went back to the inner room, 
undid my bed-roll, and took out candy, soap, cigar- 
ettes, and sugar. I gave away some biscuits and 
candy, and sold more. I gave each child who came 
in a bright, red English primer, full of little colored 
pictures. 

The whole village was soon dribbling into the 
room ; the men were smoking my cigarettes and spit- 
ting noisily and incessantly on the floor. Then I 
brought out from my rucksack pocketbooks, gloves, 
flannel shirts, chains, and buttons, an odd assortment 
which I had carried in my travels far enough. For 
two and three roubles each my little objects quickly 
disappeared and so did the money of the Lapps. 
Anna purchased one of several English coins I was 
selling as souvenirs. Then I announced clearly that 
it was skins, skins ! that I wished to trade for. There 
was that most excellent flannel shirt from New York, 
and in addition twenty-five packets of cigarettes to be 
had for a pair of good reindeer-skin gloves. A pair 
of good reindeer-skin gloves appeared, and succes- 
sively three reindeer skins as well as several pairs of 
slippers, plain, with colored-thread markings, and 
one pair of baby slippers ; for all of which I paid 
with sugar and cigarettes. But no fur hat had been 
produced. I saw one I coveted on the head of the 
boy who had sold me a pair of slippers for 40 packets 
of cigarettes. 

His mother had brought back the cigarettes in a 
cloth and thrown them in a heap on the floor with 



HONEY LOU 139 

dark mutterings ; I did not understand what she said ; 
notwithstanding, I had felt myself unqualifiedly the 
unscrupulous trader who had taken advantage of a 
boy's vicious craving for cigarettes, especially in the 
eyes of Anna, who continued to sew skins: so I had 
presented to the mother the slippers with a careless 
shrug of my shoulders. In twenty minutes the boy 
was back with a skin for which I again had paid the 
heap of cigarettes lying on the floor, and which I 
discovered afterward was almost worthless. An- 
other boy sold me a fish which my cook would serve 
only to the cat. Wicked, avaricious people, the 
Lapps ! 

My great desire now was to get a hat somehow ! 
I gave one good look at my signet ring and one long 
thought to the dear aunt who gave it to me for a 
graduation present, and then told the boy to take the 
ring home to his mother and see if she would give his 
hat for it. He came back with the ring on his 
finger; the hat was soon on my head; the regular 
300-rouble sort of brown, soft young reindeer-skin 
hat with long fur strings at the sides, tipped with 
white fur ; it was mine ! I bought another fur hat, 
not so handsome but more a la mode, for the two 
blankets that I had brought in my sleeping-roll, 
delivery the following morning. I promised the coat 
on my back to my hostess for her husband, in the 
face of a competition of flattering off*ers. And fi- 
nally the limit to my salable commodities being prac- 
tically reached, I sat back among my cleverly-pur- 
chased furs to enjoy their luxuriousness. How 



140 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

could I have spent a more exciting evening in Kil- 
densky Pagost! 

During all the time of my trading, however, I had 
felt the quiet presence of Anna : to her, undoubtedly, 
I appeared the guilty speculator I was ; certainly she 
took me for a despicable merchant ; that I hadn't 
traded with rum was only because I was unable to 
get it, she probably thought. After the trading, 
Anna, left the house in the company of a girl of her 
own age, and so gave me the opportunity to learn 
her history in the village ; in fact, opportunity was 
already knocking on the door in the person of a lady 
of fifty who was seated at the table near me, fingering 
an unsold pair of gloves of mine (how could any 
Lapp have respect for my glossy factory gloves when 
the Lapp gloves were so much warmer and prettier?). 
This lady wore the old Russian, brightly-colored 
hat, covered in front with a beaded pattern ; from 
her belt hung her keys, her scissors, her thimble, and 
short strings of beads. Of course, she was only too 
glad to be my informant. 

During the winter and till two weeks before, there 
had been stationed at Kildensky Pagost a British 

officer. Captain S . I was already acquainted 

with this fact ; I had been told at Kola headquarters 
how this officer had been detailed to this village with 
orders to keep the Lapps in the neighborhood 
friendly to the Allies, and, in case of need, to use 
Lapp scouts for getting quick intelligence of any 
advance of the enemy. I had been told also what 
fine things Captain S had done for the Lapps, 



HONEY LOU 141 

and how, as a consequence, he ruled over them like a 
king: he had kept his Lapps well-supplied with food; 
he had broken up an epidemic that once threatened 
the village, gi^^ng what medical attention to its vic- 
tims he could, himself; he had learned a lot of both 
the Lapp and the Russian languages, and had taught 
the children English. Anna was his active lieuten- 
ant in all his work, so it now appeared from my gos- 
sip's story — and probably his inspiration, as well ! 
Indeed the captain spent most of his evenings in this 
very room of mine host and beside this very table. 
Their language studies weren't of a tedious nature 
evidently. Captain S had a Decker gramo- 
phone, and for an hour or two every evening it was 
going steadily. The villagers flocked in, and some- 
times the young folks danced there. The captain 
was as fond of the machine music as the Lapps, and 
would have played even more than he did, so my dis- 
cerning gossip assured me, except that he had dis- 
covered that the only way he could get time more or 
less alone with Anna was to stop the gramophone 
regularly in the middle of the evening; after that he 
and Anna chatted by themselves in a mixture of 
Lapp, Russian, and English words. 

Well, now Captain S was gone. I happened 

to know how reluctant headquarters were to have him 
leave Kildensky, even then when there was no danger 
of military action in that quarter; the sort of 
thing he did there was a rare piece of good work; 
having created in a widening circle among all the 
Lapps of the peninsula an amicable understanding 



142 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

with the Allied forces. But Captain S said he 

was sick and must go to England, and the doctor 
said that the captain was much sicker than he ad- 
mitted and that the proper treatment for his illness 
could only be given in England. After his departure 
from the village, Anna was not the same girl ; my in- 
formant whispered that she thought the girl was 
sick ; from the moment I had set eyes upon her, Anna 
had impressed me as being a sick woman. 

The newly-weds began to retire within their cur- 
tained bed and the last lingering guests departed. 
The hozeaka went to bed and pulled her curtains. I 
made a soft bed for myself on the floor on top of my 
skins, and got inside my bed-roll. But I could not 
go to sleep. The strong tea I had drunk in large 
quantities, or the excitement of the bartering, or 
vivid patches of the gossip's story, something it was 
that kept me staring awake ! I watched the moon- 
light play over the unfamiliar objects of the room. 
About twelve o'clock Anna returned and made up her 
bed of skins on the floor, as far as possible from 
mine, but still so near I could hear her breathing. 
The consumptive in the outer room began coughing 
and coughed all night. Before I fell asleep — I 
think that it was about three o'clock — I had deter- 
mined upon one additional piece of bargaining in the 
Lapp village. Immediately after morning tea I pro- 
ceeded to complete this transaction. 

" Anna," I said, pointing to the instrument, " I 
should like to purchase this gramophone. They tell 
me it is yours." 



HONEY LOU 143 

*' Yes, it is mine, but I do not want to sell it." 

" But I wish a Decker gramophone like yours very 
much; there isn't one on the market in all North 
Russia. I am willing to pay you a good price." 

" There is no price you could name that would 
induce me to sell." 

" You have in mind the prices I was offering last 
night for furs ! When I really want something I am 
not stopped by a price ; I am an American ! " 

" You look like an Englishman ! " 

" Anna, I will give a thousand roubles ! " 

" A thousand roubles isn't much this year." 

" Two thousand roubles, then ! Twenty-five hun- 
dred roubles ! You can go a long way on that ! " 

" You are j oking. You are throwing away your 
money ! " 

"I'm not joking. I want that gramophone more 
than a little 1 " 

"Why this one?" Anna was watching me 
closely. 

I did not wince under her examination. " Because 
I want it. You know what caprice is I " 

" Yes, I know what caprice is. You will really 
pay twenty-five hundred roubles ? " Anna was cal- 
culating something more than roubles in her small 
head, I thought. 

" Yes," I said, " I will pay you the money this 
morning." 

" You may have the gramophone for twenty-five 
hundred roubles 1 " 

"And how much may I have the records for? 



14*4, SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

You aren't letting them go with the machine, even 
for so handsome a price, are you? " 

" I never thought about the records. You will 
not want them I They will be of no use to you. 
They are badly scratched. You can get new records 
at Murmansk."' 

" That's where you are entirely mistaken : it is 
almost impossible to get records here in North Rus- 
sia now." 

" I will not sell the records ! " 
" Yes you will — for a thousand roubles ? " 
*' You are a queer man. I noticed that last night 
when you were buying the skins. You became very 
much excited about it, didn't you? Are all Amer- 
icans like you ? I never saw one before ! " 
" Well! which question shall I answer? " 
'Why were you so much excited last evening? 
Your eyes were on everybody and everything ! " 

" Oh, I don't know 1 " I wanted to reply — as I 
always want to reply to such a typical Slav question 
—"That's wholly my affair!" "May I have the 
records, — please 1 " 

" Yes, all except one 1 " 
" And may I ask which record is that ! " 
" Why, I don't see that it should make any differ- 
ence to you ! It's a song called ' Honey Lou ' ! " 

This was evidently S 's favorite record. I 

knew the music; as music it had no merit; I would 
wager a good deal that, half-civilized Lapp though 
she was, Anna's favorite record would have ten times 
the musical virtue. 



HONEY LOU 145 

" If It is * Honey Lou ' ! " I exclaimed with feigned 
ecstasy, " I will give you two hundred roubles for 
the record. It is a splendid song, isn't it? " 

" I am not used to thinking such music fine, but 
you English and Americans are, I suppose ! It may 
not be a fine record, but I don't intend to sell it ; my 
caprice, you see! Besides it's the most scratched 
record of the lot ! " 

" Don't be sentimental," I said slowly and in a 
tone different from any I had previously used with 
Anna ; " for that record I will give you 200 roubles, 
and, in addition, aU the skins I purchased last night. 
I'll have to pay you part with skins because I haven't 
the whole price in cash left here with me ! " 

" You are a rash trader ! I have seen Russians 
and Lapps trade in such a spirit, but I do not under- 
stand your caprice at all ! " She looked me straight 
in the eyes as if trying hard to understand. 

" There you are ! All these skins, the profits of 
my whole expedition I " I picked up my skins one by 
one and arrayed them on her person and about her 
chair and the table. I laughed and she smiled: it 
was a bargain! And the excitement of this single 
piece of bartering was as much greater than that of 
all the bartering of the evening before, as was the 
price greater than all the prices of the evening 
before. 

An hour later I was on my way returning to Kola 
much more quickly than I had come, in frosty air 
and over crisp snow. Three days later I was on a 
boat being carefully piloted out of Murmansk har- 



146 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

bor. A wicked time I had of it on that cargoless 
boat ! I had come aboard late, after the ship had 
gone into midstream, to discover that my cabin-berth 
had been given to another. As a consequence the 
Captain declared my appearance unofficial, and dur- 
ing the whole voyage I slept in the saloon, I ate in 
the saloon, I was sick in the saloon, beastly sick and 
cold! We had among the first-class passengers 
some English officers, several Italian and American 
officers, and, at the last table, seven or eight Russian 
officers; these Russians were my bed-fellows on the 
benches of the saloon. 

The name of Captain S I found posted on the 

life-boat lists that first morning out, and I had him 
pointed out to me, a tall, fair fellow 1 He was 
dressed during the voyage carelessly in soft high 
boots. He walked the deck, and swung from post to 
wall inside the boat when she rocked, with an un- 
conscious swank. He was freckled; he did not look 
sick till you were face to face with him. All the 
time he was not walking the deck, he sat next the 
commanding officer at the first table, and played 
cards with him and his set. 

In the middle of one evening, when our unsteady 
ship sobered down a little, I rose from my recumbent 
position in the particular corner of the saloon to 
which I had squatter-claim, with an idea of something 
to do beyond smoking a cigarette or picking up to 
read a ship's-library dense novel of Henry James, 
" The Sacred Fount." I went into the passage-way 
and took out from my kit-bag near the stairs the 



HONEY LOU 147 

** Decker " I had acquired at Kildensky. I placed 
it on one of the saloon tables and set it going. The 
cheer spread about by the clinking notes of the 
gramophone was only too apparent. It had its 
effect on the group of officers playing bridge and 
drinking whiskies, and was, I thought, the indirect 
cause of bringing their game to an accounting stage. 

At the moment I saw that Captain S was free 

from his game, I put on my costly record, " Honey 

Lou." Instantly Captain S came over to my 

table and sat down beside the machine. 

" Honey Lou, you know how much I love you, 
Love you more and more, each passing day ! 
And I'm sure I'm never going to leave you long, 
Or go away, far away. 
Honey Lou-ou-ou-ou-ou ! " 

At this part of the song the needle had stuck in a 
cavity in the record. I had known that it would 
when I put the record on, but I did not show myself 
ready to shift the needle along. In a minute Cap- 
tain S had reached over and done so. I was 

surprised by all this rapidity of the steps in the 
working out of my idea, and so was caught almost 
unprepared by the Captain's sudden question, " Have 
you had your ' Decker ' long? " 

" Why, no ! only a few days." 

" You bought it in Russia then — second-hand, I 
suppose." 

" Yes, and I paid a good, stiff price for it ! " 

" Of course you did ; scarcity value ! " 



1^8 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

" The price was robbery, about four thousand 
roubles." 

" Some one was out to make a fortune out of you. 
There are officers there in Russia who are making 
fortunes, they say, ' skolkoing,' selling rum and jam 
to the natives ! " 

" My vendor was no officer ; she is a native, her- 
self ! " 

" She, she ! Oh, I see ! In what part of the dis- 
trict were you, Mr. Caldwell.'' " 

" I was at Kola mostly ! " 

*' It was a Kola native you showered with your 
roubles then 1 " 

" No, I didn't purchase it at Kola ; not many miles 
away, though." 

"At Kildensky Pagost.?" 

"That's it! at Kildensky Pagost. She did not 
want at all to sell me the machine, Captain S ." 

" You think she consented to sell because you 
offered so much money. With the money — ! " 

" The money in this case might do more for her 
sentiments than the gramophone." 

" You think she intends to follow me. I see you 
know our story ! " 

*' Yes, I think I understand it. Captain S ." 

" And how was the girl when you saw her.? " 

" Not in good health, I should say. Captain." 

"Will you have a whisky.?" he interposed. 

" No, thanks," I replied, " but I would have a 
glass of port ! " The waiter brought two ports. 
Meantime I wound the machine up and " Honey 



HONEY LOU 149 

Lou " came out again for us, and again Captain 

S lifted the needle out of the dent in the record. 

I was thinking how different he had probably looked 
when he used to lift the needle out of the dent at 
Kildensky. I could well imagine what the man was 
when he was gay. Now the music had given him a 
touch of melancholy ; he felt my unspoken sympathy 
and he opened a little of his heart to me, saying, " I 
did think I never could leave the witch, — but I did ; 
I must return to England to save my life, the doc- 
tor said! " 

" And isn't it the only way to save hers ! 
Shouldn't she come away to England for the best 
medical care and treatment, too? " 

" I suppose so. We civilized brutes leave behind 
us immoral diseases with these backward peoples, but 
are too moral to leave behind the cures for them." 

*' And if she does follow you and find you, you 
will not allow her to regret yielding this inestimable 
object for a price? " 

" Don't judge me too harshly, Caldwell. I did 
my best to persuade her to come with me or follow 
me on close after. But she wouldn't listen to any- 
thing I said. The more I urged her, the more I 
wanted her to come, at the same time the more 
stubborn she became : all my words only made it clear 
to her, she said, that for us to be together at all in 
England would be bad for me ! she could not go into 
my society there with me. Silly child! she 
thought I might come back to Russia ; there it would 
hurt nobody for us to be together. I had to leave 



150 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

her talking that way. I gave her directions for 
following me to England, and I gave her two letters 
that will let her past the officials at Murmansk, I 
think. Do you know what made her change her 
mind? " 

" I don't know," I replied sincerely, " I can only 
guess. Perhaps it is that her will is weaker now, or 
rather the glamour of the high principle for which 
she was acting, has gone, and she only feels intense 
suffering ; perhaps she doubts the principle. At any 
rate she is quite right in getting out of Kildensky; 
she has seen too much of the world outside her native 
village ; she has seen her one man of the whole world, 
outside." 

" She is capable of coming to find me, do you 
think? " 

" Certainly she is ! Those Lapp women are cap- 
able of doing everything for their men ; they do most 
of the work; what little I was among the Lapps, I 
noticed this." 

" If you had been there a longer time, as I was, for 
example, you would have no doubt on that point. 
The Lapp women do do everything for their men." 

"And Anna, when you were there — ?" 

" Did everything for me, yes ! " 

" And you can do everything for her — in Eng- 
land." 

" It will be hard. My people — of course — but 
hang them; for their sakes I doubt if I should be 
able to pull myself out of this disease ! " 

"But, for her!" 



HONEY LOU 151 

" For Anna — well, I shall leave no stone unturned 
to get better ! " 

" And she, for her part ? " 

" Mind, she has no weak will when there's anything 
to be done for me." 

** And you want her cured for yourself ? " 

" Yes, if it must be put so crudely, I do want her 
cured for myself." 

" Another question, S ! don't answer if I am 

too inquisitive: you love her just as much as if she 
hadn't, — as if she weren't — sick ? " 

"More, more! It is strange, isn't it? I would 
never have believed it possible eight months ago." 

" More ! even though it was she did you the in- 
jury.''" I was frightened at the boldness of my 
question. 

" It was not she who did me the injury. I will 
confess it was I did her the injury — though I didn't 
know it at the time. But if our both being sick — 
if she were responsible for that; well, I should still 
love her, and love her no less, I believe ! Strange, 
isn't it.? " 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 

On account of our present-day means of receiving 
news by headlines and more headlines, we are gain- 
ing wrong ideas about the Russians ; for these head- 
lines bear a message, poKtically-selected, perhaps, as 
it drifts to us through Europe, which distorts the 
character of that people. The Russians are not 
cruel and bloodthirsty ; they are not all Cossacks 
that ride wild horses and love only to fight and plun- 
der. Executions, indeed, there have been, now by 
the Reds, and now by the Whites. Some one has 
said that the diiference between these two kinds of 
political slaughter is that the killing by the Reds is 
the hot vengeance of youth and the killing by the 
Whites is the cold vengeance of the old. Personally 
I learned of little violence while I was in Soviet 
Russia, though I have no doubt the Bullitt figures 
of five thousand executions in all Soviet Russia may 
be true enough. 

At a political meeting I saw the head of the Kazan 
counter-revolutionary tribunal that had condemned 
to death two young officers. I knew that these offi- 
cers had been plotting the overthrow of the Bolshevik 
power. The President of this bloody arm of the 
Soviet power in Kazan sat several rows ahead of me, 

the only man in the hall with a hat on, the only man 

152 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 153 

smoking (a fat cigar, difficult to be found in the city 
at any price!). I thought to myself at the time: 
" What a heartless barbarian ! " Later, taking a 
position where I could study the fellow's face, I was 
surprised to find it, far from being rough, rather the 
face of a simple-souled idealist; surely he had not 
the instincts of a murderer! The executions for 
which he and other somewhat fanatical Russians were 
in those days responsible were the excrescences of 
what, looked at sympathetically in respect to 
motives, however mistaken, might be considered as a 
holy revolutionary crusade that sought not to 
abridge life but to provide it more abundantly. 

Many observers, especially military people I 
talked with in North Russia, consider the Russian 
irretrievably childish by nature, but it seems to me 
that such observers misread Russian character. 
What often at first appears childishness and lack 
of judgment and self-government in the Russian may 
on deeper analysis be found to be an entire absence of 
the prejudices, artifices, and prides of western civil- 
ization. His thinking, especially at the present mo- 
ment, is loose and decoded. / 

Many hilarious stories of Russian childishness 
and superstition can be enjoyed in recent periodical 
literature. There is the story of the Russian man 
and wife traveling from Kofkula to Tula who meet 
a priest and thereupon retrace their steps to Kofkula 
in order to begin their journey over again under 
more auspicious circumstances. There is the story 
of the confiscation by peasants of a large estate on 



154 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

which was an artificial pond well-stocked with fish. 
It was at first proposed to kill the fish for a village 
feast, but the proposal that carried the day was the 
one that they should let the fish escape down the 
brook and be free, even as were the peasants now 
themselves. Quite typical of this sort of story is 
the recent yarn about the patients at a hospital in 
Kief who went on a strike because the doctors re- 
fused to treat all of them equally with injections 
which had been the distinct privilege of the typhoid 
patients. 

Whatever basis for these stories there may be, one 
draws the conclusion that Russian people, or Russian 
peasants even, are fools, to one's own folly. jRather 
than exaggerate the number of soft-headed Russians 
per capita, it would be better for us to consider ab- 
jectly the number of fools to be found at home. We 
have in America many who live mentally altogether 
on inherited and current prejudices and shibboleths, 
and not a few of this number we honor with high 
office and make our mouthpieces. Moreover, we are 
a people given as much as any other, perhaps, to 
popular hysteria and hasty mob-action. To be sure, 
we are rid of many of the superstitions of the older 
civilizations. We do not, for instance, change our 
direction by reason of the chance meeting with a 
priest. But we stick, all the same, to certain crude 
national and racial beliefs of our own that are as 
illogical as corresponding beliefs that persist in 
Russia or in China. That tale of the nationaliza- 
tion of Russian women, which is still sedulously and 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 155 

indecently retailed bj men with reputation among 
us, is an example of the barefaced credulity that re- 
flects both on the intelligence and on the moral recti- 
tude of some Americans. 

In addition to the Russian's simplicity, by some 
foreigners termed childishness, are the predominant 
qualities of eagerness and tolerance, normal to the 
Russian temperament, and to-day accentuated by a 
flood of energy emanating from the hope and the 
enthusiasm released by the revolution. On our ship 
steaming from Newcastle to Murmansk, were 3000 
Russians, wounded at Salonika and in France fight- 
ing for the Allies, and they gave us our first taste 
of the new revolutionary ardor. Always they were 
singing their revolutionary songs ; some one of them 
was often seen reading a newspaper to a group of his 
illiterate comrades ; at one and the same time, two 
or three self-appointed leaders would be speaking 
from rostra in different parts of the boat, or groups 
would be joining in heated but fistless debate. One 
Russian in first-class, an ex-cavalry colonel whom 
I know was an ardent monarchist at heart, went down 
among the soldiers dressed in rough clothes and was 
listened to with attention, though I suppose the big 
majority of the men were convinced republicans. 
(Speaking of old clothes, all the Americans in our 
party at first rigidly observed the rule in Russia of 
appearing only in undignified clothes ; this was in 
accordance with one of our superstitions regarding 
the Bolsheviki.) Raymond Robins, chief of the 
American Red Cross in Russia, tells an amazing 



156 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

story of Russian tolerance. Speaking at Gatchlna 
in a hall crowded with pro-Bolshevik soldiers, he 
■was urging support of Kerensky and the war against 
Germany. When he had finished and was going to 
the door, there was a mass-movement of soldiers 
toward him. He feared for his life, as they took him 
on their shoulders, shouting. But the shouting, he 
tells us with the wonder still in his heart, was ap- 
proval of a man himself, of whose political thesis 
they could not be persuaded. 

My experience as an American traveling a good 
deal in Russia in the summer of 1918 leads me to 
confess that the Bolsheviks have on the whole sur- 
prisingly good manners. I saw among the Bolshevik 
commissars, clerks and railroad-men less of that 
hauteur and crankiness than is usually found in 
the official mind that one comes to know and dread 
when traveling abroad. Perhaps these officials will 
become cantankerous in time as the newness of their 
task wears off, but my guess is that their fresh minds, 
often sadly untrained, are not going stale in this 
generation. The experience of some Y. M. C. A. 
men I knew illustrates well the freshness of the ways 
of the Bolshevik officials. 

A party of Y. M. C. A. secretaries had been suc- 
cessful in crossing the Czech lines from Samara into 
Bolshevik Russia by boat along the Volga River, 
and with them had smuggled through a large quan- 
tity of flour, which nearly doubled in value every 
hundred miles they brought it north and east. At 
Jaroslav the Americans asked permission from the 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 157 

authorities to send the flour on to Moscow, stating 
that it was for use of the American Embassy, the 
American Consulate at JMoscow, and the Y. M. C. A. 
The Bolshevik commissar of transport for the city 
replied that if the flour was for the American Em- 
bassy and Consulate, it would receive immediate at- 
tention, would take preference to other freight, and 
he, himself, would see that the matter were expedited, 
but there would be a corresponding charge made; 
for, he argued, the American Government was a 
bourgeois government and could afford to pay well 
for services rendered ; on the other hand, if it were 
purely a service for the Y. M. C. A., it would receive 
the same immediate and preferential and personal 
attention — but there would be no charge, as the 
Y. M. C. A. did much for the Russian people. 

Fortunately, almost everybody had a warm spot 
in his heart for Americans. There was a feeling 
that Americans loved freedom and would show sym- 
pathy to the struggling young republic, even though 
it were socialist. When we wished to get past a 
guard to a train or into a building, we shouted 
" Amerikanski Meese," (American Mission) ; that 
failing to work, some one dug out an old certificate 
signed by a well-known Bolshevik like Sverdloff, 
President of the All-Russian Congress, or presented 
a passport, or any other paper in Russian or Eng- 
lish with a documentary appearance or a red seal 
upon it, and the guard being unable to read looked 
up at us respectfully and allowed us to pass. On 
the other hand, the people hated the English, but, as 



158 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

far as I could observe, treated them with considera- 
tion. It was generally believed that certain English 
and French officials were aiding the counter-revolu- 
tionists. In the official Soviet newspaper one day, 
I saw the story of the complicity of French and Eng- 
lish in the Czecho-Slovak rebellion in the summer of 
1918. In view of such facts, it was surprising to me 
that foreigners were not treated more roughly than 
they were. 

The non-Bolshevik Russians are not discriminated 
against so much as one has been led to suppose. The 
fact is, that the former bourgeoisie are, in these 
hungry days, the only people well fed, generally 
speaking; for they may sell an overcoat or a jewel 
and obtain in return the butter, chicken, and eggs 
that are sold at prohibitive and speculative prices. 
Many of the former officials still hold office, especially 
in the country. Lenin retains the Zemstvo organiza- 
tions, although they were the typical bourgeois, or 
middle-class, institution of before-the-war, because he 
realizes its functional value in the new state. Many 
of the old Zemstvo officers remain in positions of 
trust. I read daily proclamations in the newspapers 
declaring the perverseness and black character of 
the bourgeoisie, but whenever these proclamations 
were put into effect, it was generally with a wide 
latitude, and common sense, and humanity, and al- 
lowances shown for the upper classes. In the 
schools, at least, I believe there exists irrefutable 
democracy. The children of the upper classes re- 
ceive exactly the same food, instruction, and indi- 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 159 

vidual attention as children of the present " ruling 
class." 

It sounds odd to speak of anything to do with 
Bolshevism as democratic, but we must beware that 
we do not come to a consideration of Soviet theories 
prejudiced, prepared to interpret them only in the 
terms of the static forms of the so-called democratic 
government of the past, forgetting that time and 
change of conditions may eventually destroy the 
democratic value even in such a famous instrument 
of democracy, as, for example, the constitution of 
the United States, itself. Lenin has said that Rus- 
sia has to-day the most democratic government in 
the world. One reason for this, in his opinion, is 
that in Russia the people control through the Soviets 
the executive, legislative and judicial branches of 
the government, directly. Judges are elected, the 
local Soviet makes its own laws ; it is the executive, 
itself; its members are commissars of labor, educa- 
tion, streets, police, etc. We, for our part, may 
prefer as the guiding principle in our government, 
the separation of the executive, judicial, and legis- 
lative powers, but, at the same time, we may be gen- 
erous enough intellectually to admit that our prin- 
ciple is essentially no more democratic than the Soviet 
principle. It has been thought that it is the un- 
i^epresentative character of the present body of 
electors that makes the Soviet government undemo- 
cratic ; it has been thought that the present Russian 
Government is a class-autocracy. The Bolsheviks 
reply to this that all who do any work with hand or 



160 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

brain among them are entitled to vote, and that idle- 
ness is the only disqualification for voting. The 
anti-Bolshevik Bessabarian delegate to the Supreme 
Peace Council at Paris, after traveling through 
South Russia, declares that he found the city people 
there want Bolshevik rule and that the peasants are 
unconvinced that there could be a better rule. 
Judging from several such pieces of information, it 
would seem that at the present time the Bolshevik 
Government is this much democratic : that it is at the 
least more wanted than any alternative government. 
No doubt propaganda has played a large part in 
increasing support for the Bolsheviks. In Kazan I 
was always seeing poster-announcements of lectures 
on socialism and revolution. A well-known professor 
of history at Moscow gave a course of lectures on the 
French revolution. I heard the most important 
woman of the Bolsheviks, Kallantai, their first min- 
ister of education, lecture on the subject, " Russian 
Parties " in the Workingmen's and Peasants' Hall, 
once the grand concert-hall of the city, but then dis- 
mantled ; the pictures of royalty had been torn out 
of their frames, but the frames remained unbroken 
to tell the story. It was the " new-time " evening 
of a hot day; the sun shone through the curtainless 
west windows, and right into the speaker's face; 
everybody improvised a fan; but no one wearied of 
the two-and-a-half-hours performance. The artisan 
family was there in its holiday clothes, comfortable 
and smiling in spite of the heat ; the younger element 
enjoyed itself in the usual way, during the inter- 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 161 

mission (there were refreshments in the ante-cham- 
ber) ; there was a sprinkling of former officers and 
bourgeois women with curling lip. Behind me sat 
the President of the Kazan Mensheviks (the Socialist 
party of the extreme right). Kallantai excoriated 
the Mensheviks for their treachery to the Proletariat, 
and the Menshevik President, thereupon, left the hall. 
Our skillful and persuasive orator next vehemently 
attacked the right Social-Revolutionaries, accusing 
them of wishing to set up a government like that of 
America, where, she declared she knew by her own 
observations, the captialists controlled votes by 
manipulation of the press. 

The priests are active propagandists, as a rule, 
against the Bolsheviks. The priests feel keenly their 
loss of power over the people since the revolution. 
The church, however, has not in any real sense, been 
persecuted ; all church buildings are intact, and every 
service of the church calendar is held without change, 
the priests not recognizing the new calendar adopted 
by the government, which is our calendar. At the 
ancient cathedral church in the Moscow Kremlin, I 
witnessed, with many other Americans, the impressive 
all-night Easter service, when for the only time in 
the year, all the church candles are lighted. The 
Soviet at Moscow did take action to destroy one of 
the most virulent religious superstitions. The Rus- 
sian orthodox believing that the bodies of the saints 
remain in their graves uncorrupted, the Soviet au- 
thorities disinterred publicly some of these saints' 
coffins to prove to the people the emptiness of the 



162 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

tradition. At the village of K , I expressed to 

two Bolshevik school teachers whom I knew to be 
devout and regular church attendants, my surprise 
that they were good Bolsheviks and at the same time 
good churchmen. They replied: " We Bolsheviks are 
not against the church ; we are against the priests 
who for many years have robbed the people and 
helped the Government to keep them down." 

At Kazan in May I witnessed the ceremonies of 
Kresne Hod, one of the holiest of the many holy 
days. Priest and flock of every church in the city 
marched with its treasured icons to the Kremlin 
Square before the gates of the fortress, for the an- 
nual service held there in the presence of thousands. 
It was a striking picture — the broad Volga River 
off several miles below under rounded hills just get- 
ting green, the old painted Tartar walls of the Krem- 
lin at the rear ; the faithful of each congregation com- 
ing from different directions to join the mass, add- 
ing banner to banner, and color to color, each band 
singing, and its own church bells ringing in the dis- 
tance; women in bright peasant costume in knots 
here and there ; squads of Red Guard soldiers carry- 
ing bayonets, constantly passing through the mass 
of people to the fortress, and, as they did so, baring 
their heads respectfully, neither annoying nor being 
annoyed (this was a sample of ordinary Russian 
tolerance) ; in the center of the crowd, on a dais, the 
gorgeously bedecked hierarchy of Kazan Province. 
From Russia one has to go back to the Middle Ages 
for such a spectacle. The Bolsheviks have taken 



RUSSIAN NEW-MINDEDNESS 163 

over from the church some of this appeal of the 
pageant. In the proletarian celebrations is usually 
a display of revolutionary banners, and there is much 
revolutionary music, which draws upon the folk and 
the church melodies. 

The new political movement in Russia seems to 
have borrowed much more than pageantry from the 
church. It seems to have awakened and concen- 
trated the power of faith in the people. Russians 
are beginning to believe that a better hfe is possible 
for them, and that the}"^ have in themselves the means 
of making this better life. They recognize that these 
desirable things cannot be had by sheer desire, how- 
ever, and that as a condition precedent they must 
improve both their work and their brains. That is 
why they attach such importance to education, and 
why there has arisen among them a feverish, and as 
yet superficial, new culture. Labor magazines, and 
cheap editions of the classics, and people's universi- 
ties, and enlightenment societies have appeared all 
over the country ; even in parts which were no longer 
revolutionary and had come under a counter-revolu- 
tionary government, such as North Russia, I ob- 
served these phenomena. 

But along with the new belief of the Russian is a 
skepticism on his part of the agencies of government 
and enlightenment. He doggedly calls in question 
the church and the old education. Oppressed so 
long, he fears reenslavement. Confronted with of- 
fers of help and encouragement for freedom from 
outside his country, he is preternaturally suspicious. 



164 SKETCHEiS OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

He was, I found, suspicious of the good will expressed 
in the messages of President Wilson to Russia. 
Coming up the Hudson River on an Atlantic liner 
after two years abroad, I stood beside a young Rus- 
sian girl who was seeing New York for the first time. 
" H,ow wonderful," she gasped, " how like a magic 
city ! See the steam-smoke being puffed slowly from 
each building 1 " Then after five minutes of silence, 
she declared solemnly, " I said a few minutes ago I 
liked your New York. I do I But, now, I am afraid 
of it, very much afraid." What this girl felt toward 
the expression of American genius, many other Rus- 
sians feel. They admire, but they fear. Do they 
fear that even in our wonderful civilization, boasting 
of its freedom, there may not be some doors closed to 
hospitality, some avenues closed to the mind, some 
spaces closed to the spirit.? 



TAVARISH 



Tavarish, 

You crossed the lines too soon ! 

You should have waited for the movement of your 

company 
In the general revolt that is coming. 
Poor fellow, you were too impatient ! 
Well, never mind! You're here amid your strong 

Red friends. 
If only for an hour. 
Wounded Tavarish, drink this hot tea ; 
Drink to the common weal of us common Russians ! 

Tavarish, 

You were hungry in Archangel — the Allied base ; 

And they drafted you to fight your Russian 

tavarishee ; 
And so you had to turn a gun against us — poorly 

aimed, very poorly aimed I 

But the English sentry who spied you 

Crossing the lines, 

Creeping in the woods through the crusted snow, 

Aimed well ! 

Drink, dying comrade, this new wine of Russian 

treading, 

165 



166 SKETCHES OF SOVIET HUSSIA 

That bleeding feet have pressed ; 
Drink to the life of the nascent republic 
With all your yearning flickering desire. 

Alas, Tavarish I 
You will not drink 
Even one toast to new Russia. 
The Englishman aimed well — 
Your English brother, 
Toward whom you bore no grudge, 
For whom you gave your life, 
As well as for us — 

Tough Red Guards — freezing, and starving and 
singing in these far northern swamps. 

Never mind, Tavarish ! 

For you, it is as well. 

The rigors of winter, and the many woes of Russia, 

For you are now done; 

And the Spring of no country and every country 

Already is yours. 

But, Tavarish, young lad, 

One enviable thing you missed — 

Perhaps you don't know — 

The hearty greetings of revolutionary comrades. 

The hail of their swelling songs. 

You don't know how gay we keep 

In our Arctic camp, Tavarish, 

With a hail, and good cheer. 

And a drink around, 



TAVARISH: A POEM TAVARISH 167, 

Of the Russian new wine ; 

Royally hailing our republic of kings — 

Long live the republic of workmen ! 



PART TWO 
WHOLE CLOTH 



WHOLE CLOTH 

A DIALOGUE ON POLITICAL REALISM 

CHARACTERS 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch Steklov, a professor. 

Alexis Petrovich Zolodeen, who has come to man- 
hood during the war. 

PiOTR Vassilievitch Semyonov, a judge. 

Frank Plaistead, an American. 

Pavel Andreivitch Alexieff, a Russian gentle^ 
man; known as " Pasha." 

NicoLAi IvANOviTCH SoLKov, an artist; known 
as " Chastleevy" which, translated, means 
" happy." 

BuRTSEV, a waiter, also proprietor of the cafe. 

Carl Mardinburg, an Austrian war-prisoner. 

A Beggar, Guests of the Cafe, Men of the Crowd 
outside. 
It is seven o'clock of am. August evening in the 

Zolodeen Park at Nishni Novgorod in 1918. It has 

been a hot day, hut now a breeze plays among the 

trees. At a table in the corner of the veranda of the 

Burtsev Cafe sit six men talking animatedly ; smoking 

continuously, and occasionally drinking beer or 

171 



172 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

fruit-water. Their conversation sometimes attracts 
a group of listeners. From this corner of the cafe, 
the veranda being high, one can see boats passing 
on the river, and, now and then, a large steamer slid- 
ing impressively into dock. Past the cafe, on the 
path several yards away, the crowd moves m two 
opposite streams, watching the war-hydroplanes at 
their evening practice, and talking vivaciously. A 
barefooted newsboy enters the cafe with the after- 
noon telegram sheets. Alexis Petrovich, the 
youngest man at the table, buys one and reads it 
eagerly with his friend at his left, Michail Sergei- 
viTCH Steklov. This friend is a striking person, 
with thick white hair, kindly wrinkles, large head, 
short neck; his cheeks have good color; he wears a 
low collar and a dark-red tie that becomes him well. 
Alexis Petrovich is fresh in face; he has a slight 
figure, an oval head, abundance of curly hair, and 
small but perfect features. In fact, his physical 
charm is such that he is always listened to. His 
family, the Zolodeens, had for years distinguished 
themselves in the Czar's army, and young Alexis had 
from the outbreak of war served as an officer of the 
Guards, till in the second year he was taken to Ger- 
many a prisoner. The youth, as a wave of emotion 
passes over him, looks from the telegrams, cheeks 
flushed. 

Alexis 
It is reported here, they have arrested Prince 
Kropotkin! Kropotkin, Russians most illustrious 



WHOLE CLOTH 173 

apostle of freedom! How can you defend this, 
Teacher? 

MicHAiii Sergeivitch 
To imprison at all, is to infringe freedom. To 
restrain any man seems indefensible to him, for I 
suppose he has his own ideas of what he should do 
and what he should not do. 

A1.EXIS 

I had that impressed upon me this morning when 
I went out to the Breshky Hills to enjoy the view. I 
found a fellow lying beside the road in the cool grass 
and reading the editorials in The Red Journal. 
I sat down beside hivoi and said, " Tavarish, why 
aren't you at your work during the middle of this fine 
day? " 

A Bystander 

And why didn't the fellow reply, Alexis Zolodeen, 
by asking you the same question! 

AUEXIS 

He replied : " I worked all last week and earned 
one hundred roubles. May I not now enjoy myself 
in the sun and in the wind ! It is right that I should 
work only when I need. But here in this paper of 
The Party I read that there should be a new law 
compelling every man to work during every labor 
day, in order that the Republic may have commodi- 
ties." So this fellow in the sun and the wind, 
Teacher, was thinking only of his own freedom ! 



174 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Every man makes what fight for his own freedom 
he can ! The rich man, however, has the advantage : 
his money helps him. 

Chastljeevy, the Artist 
But it is a cheap freedom that is purchased by 
money alone ! Surely the political and the economic 
freedoms are not the only ones ! It's a wise man who 
keeps free, free from wife, from friends; free from 
the mire of books and papers ! 

Judge Semyonov 
Free from the very struggle for freedom, free from 
freedom's catchwords ; who, to preserve quiet in his 
own soul, is willing to accept certain transitional 
servitudes which self-blindness or the blindness of 
the times thrust upon him. 

Pasha, the Gentusman 
It appears to me that you are all talking of a 
freedom that few people are interested in. A free- 
dom in essence, philosophical anarchism — and here 
we are, back to our topic. Prince Kropotkinl 

Frank Plaistead 
(An American self-made business man, with many 
wrinkles for so young a man, with a f.rm mouth and 
a piercing eye. He lives with the family of Judge 
Semyonov; is engaged to the daughter, Sara 
Petrovna.) About time we came down to earth ! If 
I am to be up in the air, I should much rather be up 



WHOLE CLOTH 175 

in one of these hydroplanes ! How does all this dis- 
sertation on Freedom explain why these blood- 
thirsty Bolsheviks should imprison a man like 
Kropotkin ! 

Judge Semyonov 
(A quicJc nervous man of aristocratic hearing. 
Possessed of a wealthy wife. Has traveled much, 
especially in England, from which he has just re- 
turned. ) " A man like Kropotkin ! " Yet Tuesday 
night, Frank, I think you were mentioning Kropot- 
kin as " one of those gifted but perverse philosophers 
of disorder that should be banished from the state ! " 
(All laugh at Plaistead, including several listeners 
outside the veranda.) Kropotkin and some of us 
Social-Revolutionaries suffer almost as much perse- 
cution to-day as ever. I tell you this scum of the 
Proletariat, by putting out of action the most 
trusted leaders of the revolt in Russia, is destroying 
what opportunity there was to create a brilliant 
Socialist state. What finer leader of Russia's revo- 
lutionary Intelligentsia for three generations than 
Kropotkin! Did he not spend four years for us in 
the fortress of Saint Peter and Paul ! 

MicHAiii Sergeivitch 
It seems you expect me to give reasons for Kropot- 
kin's arrest. 

A Man From the Crowd 
Tell them the reason. Professor! Down with all 
Princes ! Draw the blood of Counter-Revolution ! 



176 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Let us remember, first, that it is only newspaper 
report that Kropotkin has been arrested. If it is 
true, I am sorry, I am grieved to hear it. I do con- 
sider him a great son of Freedom. He has done 
valiant service ; he is an old warrior whose eye is now 
dim and whose arm is weak. But, were he young, 
there need be no apology for holding an opinion 
different from his at this crisis, and, for acting upon 
it ! The freedom which Bolsheviks fight for — 

Judge Semyonov 
Do tell us, Teacher, what may be the connection 
between Bolshevism and Freedom ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

The freedom Bolsheviks seek is a narrow freedom ; 
at the most, but preliminary to the richer freedoms 
in love and knowledge to which artists and other 
eager souls devote their energies. This narrow basic 
freedom is social equality/. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
There never can be equality ! Some men can do ; 
others can't. Power goes only to those who are 
born to exercise it. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Of course it does, Chastleevy. You believe in 
force just as I do ; it's the only thing that will move 
Russians. If the Bolsheviks manage to keep the 
upper hand, — prove to me that they are the strong- 
est, and you may count me with them ! 



WHOLE CLOTH 177 

Judge Semyonov 

Pasha, it is easy to see that you were born with 
the shrewdness to discover strength and ride behind 
it. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 

You are wrong, Pasha : I do not believe in force. 
The artist, the man who creates, he possesses the 
genuine power, but he is not bigger, not louder, not 
shrewder, than the man who can't do ; he just — I 
might simply say — he just loves to work well ! 

MicHAii, Sergeivitch 
Good ! You and I agree, I think, Chastleevy, only 
you didn't wait to understand me. Of course men 
aren't equal in gifts, a fact my " social equality " 
allows for. Furthermore, I think that by taking 
power from those who have usurped it by might or 
chance, my " social equality " would free men to be 
more the masters of their own talents, however un- 
equal these talents might be. It would strip a man 
of power gained by appropriation of another's tal- 
ent ; it would appraise at its true value the " shrewd- 
ness to discover strength and ride behind it." Isn't 
it true that this shrewdness which exploits, and other 
qualities of a second-rate mind, — agility, trickiness, 
hardness, mere cleverness — are, perhaps as a rule, 
the factors that determine success in the competitive 
capitalist order? 

A1.EXIS 
Does what you have just said. Teacher, mean that 
you would have your " social equality " replace cap- 



178 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

italism? Have yon become a Socialist in becoming 
a Bolshevik? 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

I suppose you are asking whether a Bolshevik is 
a Socialist, I think that there is many a Bolshevik 
to-day who was not a Socialist before the war. This 
would be especially true of western countries like 
England and America where formerly Socialism had 
no standing. 

Frank Plaistead 
That's true. With us in America the Socialists 
as a party used to be a joke; a political club for 
unassimilated foreigners ! 

Judge Semyonov 
But now your Socialists are not so easily ignored, 
Frank ; so an American officer told me in London : in 
some places where the " foreign element " is large, 
the Republicans and Democrats have had to combine 
as " Patriots " against them. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Patriots ! Rightly named patriots, Judge ! You 
must admit. Teacher, your red friends are not 
patriots. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

I admit they won't let their minds be coerced by 
certain so-called " national interests." 



WHOLE CLOTH 179 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
I understand you perfectly. The Bolshevik is a 
genuine internationalist. 

Alexis 
A genuine internationalist ! Yes 1 He doesn't go 
round to international congresses in peace times and 
then when war springs up, eagerly join the fray 
against his former fellow-congressmen. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
But I thought the Socialist was always an inter- 
nationalist ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

That's where you're wrong. That only shows how 
much better it is to think of the Bolshevik apart from 
the Socialist; otherwise you become confused. To 
the Bolshevik this war has brought a clarification 
of the social problem. He is so thoroughly dis- 
illusioned that he is tired and sick of all talk of 
patronizing and educating the laborers up to inde- 
pendence ; he wants to see them strike for independ- 
ence at once. 

Judge Semyonov 
Your term " Bolshevik " is used too broadly, 
Teacher. You would call a Bolshevik, for example, 
an3'^body who has come to see that this war is really 
an economic struggle, and not what they say in the 
books and speeches. I don't see why I'm not a Bol- 
shevik within your definition. 



180 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA . 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

You're not a Bolshevik! You've done some 
straight thinking during the war, but you won't act 
upon this as does a Bolshevik. 

Judge Semyonov 
Well, I'm a Socialist ! I believe in social changes. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

It doesn't take courage to believe that much. So- 
cial changes are really unavoidable, aren't they? 

Alexis 
I think the Judge is much under English influences. 
That he has been so long in England counts for some- 
thing, doesn't it.^* 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Oh, Judge Piotr is carried away by the constitu- 
tional bias of the English Laborites. 

Judge Semyonov 
I certainly have my predilections. I like English 
advanced labor thought because it is so sane. It is 
broadminded, too, much broader than your Gompers 
unions, Frank. The statesmanlike program of 
" The English Labor Party " may, by its very moder- 
ation, enable England to lead us all in making these 
stupendous social adjustments that will as surely 
follow after the war in all countries as day follows 
night. The " Independent Labor Party," which is 
a component part of the English Labor Party, is 



WHOLE CLOTH 181 

frankly Socialist, and some of its members are so 
extreme as to speak kindly of the Russian Bolsheviks. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
All these moderate Laborites or Socialists entice 
some of the upper class to move to the left, and win 
them as adherents without making too great a strain 
on their pride. For after all is said and done, it is 
not a very pleasant thing, suddenly, to work, cheek 
by jowl, with men in a lower class. It is like break- 
ing caste ; your old friends boycott you. 

MiCHAIL, SeRGEIVITCH 

There is a measure of truth in your observations, 
Chastleevy. It is painful at first for a social 
or intellectual blue-blood to become a Bolshevik. 
He is self-conscious and uneasy in his heterodoxy, till 
he comes to recognize his own brethren-in-idea both 
above and below. 

ChastIvEevy, the Artist 
But why should these finest of the upper-class 
minds cease to officer the state ? I want the state in 
the hands of the best men. I am an aristocrat, you 
seel 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
And so am I ! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
I have doubts that these from the upper class who 
unite with the proletariat in this crisis of the war, or 
immediately afterward, can continue to work with 



182 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the labor people in all their social radicalisms. 
Moreover, if the educated elements leave their moor- 
ings to enter Bolshevism, shouldn't we expect the 
uneducated elements also to undergo a " change," 
and meet us half-way ! 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
Certainly the lower class must forego any 
prejudices it harbors against members of the old 
upper-class; more than that, it must work side by 
side with them, taking their advice. In order to 
obtain firm organization and control, and to increase 
productivity, the proletarian state needs the co- 
operation of the trained members of the bourgeoisie. 
From them we learn. 

Alexis 
But I hear it argued by the Left-Communists that 
if members of the bourgeoisie fill the managerial posi- 
tions, control will pass from the hands of the pro- 
letariat. 

MicHAiL, Sergeivitch 
I'm not afraid of that ! We shall not put the cart 
before the horse: the driving power remains with the 
workmen. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
But these new worker-rulers m-ust work. We will 
not divide profits with a gang of loafers. 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
Certainly, certainly! You tell us your artist is 
one who loves to work well. Now, if the laboring- 



WHOLE CLOTH 183 

man works well, why isn't he fully the man your so- 
called artist is? As for the superiority of brain- 
labor over hand-labor, hasn't a little too much been 
made of that ? The cabinet-maker may use his brain 
more than the artist. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
He may ! He does, often ! The work of some so- 
called artists is mostly hand-labor. 

MiCHAIL, SeRGEIVITCH 

And there may be more skill enlisted in the running 
of a motor-boat or the firing of an engine than in the 
teaching of algebra. Furthermore, the quality of 
the laborer's thought is the quality of the man ; often, 
original, fearless, and honest ; especially must it be 
recognized that the laborer has been forced to think 
faster and more independently since the war. In the 
factory or in the trenches, he has learned something 
of the truth not found in the modern sociology and 
economics ; he will refuse to be the same pawn he was. 

Alexis 
Few share such an opinion, Teacher ! It is the 
common mistake to suppose that the workman does 
not think. Perhaps he is ignorant ; nevertheless, this 
very ignorance saves him from some of the mal- 
education of stock-schooling. There you see Smer- 
noff, the boot-mender, passing and talking in a free 
and easy manner with a soldier tavarish; probably 
explaining the daj'^'s news as it has entered into his 
mind. Well! I have talked often with Smemoff, 



184 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

and always with profit: his arguments are unpleas- 
antly blunt at times, but as often as not I have to 
admit that he is right — at least for him, if you 
understand me. 

Chastl-eevy, the Artist 
Smernoff is a good boot-maker, too ! As. a rule 
the best worker is the best citizen. Any Bolshevism 
I approve, must provide for each citizen some work 
so hard and difiicult as to make him happy. My 
work occupies me completely; Tolstoy's motion that 
every artist must raise his own potatoes is not, to my 
way of thinking, sensible ; when I am confronted 
with a task, I must work at it steadily for days — 
and for nights ; help comes to me off the edge of 
dreams ! If the Bolsheviks show they are, in any 
such sense, a workers' party, not shirkers : if they 
respect the happiness derived from work ^ — I wish 
them success! 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
This is one of your serious nights, Chastleevy ! I 
hate to hear your talk of work. It is silly. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
When I was young, I thought work silly, too ; I 
was a great seeker after happiness. At first, I took 
it to be what people said it was. It was to have 
this or that fine thing, to experience the pleasures 
of the flesh, to be free — to be as much possible, 
free to do anything that might come into one's head 
or one's friend's head, to go and do. And so I went 



WHOLE CLOTH 185 

on many parties and I drank wine freely. I looked 
with the others on the women that it was thought 
were beautiful and gay. My father was rich, but 
that I might be richer, he decided that I must estab- 
lish myself in business, and I was willing to do that. 
But all this time I was interested in art. 
I amused myself at odd times with sketching and I 
was very fond of visiting the studios of several 
artists whom I knew. One day I was admiring a 
new portrait just being finished by Glubovsky, a 
portrait of his father; the portrait said so much to 
me of Glubovsky, father and son, and of other indi- 
viduals, that I found myself saying to my friend, the 
painter, I do not know why, " I should like to paint 
a portrait." " Of whom should you like to paint a 
portrait.?"' asked he. " Of myself," responded I, 
feeling as he did that it was a very curious thing I 
had said. But I painted the portrait of myself. It 
was very poor. So much pleasure did I find in that 
labor, however, — pleasure that I had not before 
known existed in the world, that since that time I 
have never sought else but to paint ; I have never 
since sought pleasure in parties and in being free. 
Perhaps you will say I should not call this painting 
of mine, work, for I take such pleasure in it; but I 
do call it work: it absorbs me, it tires me tremend- 
ously, it is a means of getting the best out of me for 
society : through it, society spends me and keeps me 
a contented member. 

And I should like to see that every one is also spent 
and happy through work. That is why I think I 



186 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

might become a Socialist: in a Socialist State it 
seems to me that every person would be most free to 
devote himself to the pursuits of his choice. No boy 
would fail to be an artist because he is poor. If by 
*' social equality," Teacher, you mean opportunity 
to every one to spend the riches within him, then 
indeed I am with you for social equality. It doesn't 
matter so much to me what you will do with the 
money and the lands. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Doesn't matter much, eh ! Chastleevy, you're just 
another damned communist ! 

Frank Plaistead 
After taking a turn or two about in Europe, I 
don't wonder people in these old countries talk as 
some of you Russians do. We have in America just 
those opportunities of which you speak, Solkov. 
And young people have been coming to us from the 
oppressed countries for a century to find oportunity. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
To find money ! Money, I take it, lies in the way 
at your feet there, to be kicked about ! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Yes, I have often wondered, too, if it were not the 
opportunity to make money that the Americans 
treasure? Do they really believe that it is by their 
money they are free.'' 



WHOLE CLOTH 187 

Frank Plaistead 
But I tell you — will you listen? — don't insinuate 
that lie about us that it's all a question of dollars. 
What's all this rot the Socialist gets off, if it isn't 
mostly about money ! They are the " have-nots." 
Now I tell you, in America, we want everybody to be 
a ** have " ; and we are moving along pretty well that 
way. Chastleevy, we try to give everybody a good 
job! Talk with any Americans! You will find we 
are content with our country. What does the gov- 
ernment do to hurt any one of us ? 

Pasha, the Gentloeman 
Hurrah, Plaistead! One fellow who isn't a kill- 
joy 5 

Frank Piaistead 
Put it there, old man ! 

{Shakes his hand.) 

Alexis 
And do you Americans fight to make all of us in 
Europe content with ourselves as you are.^ You say 
you fight to make the world " safe for democracy " ; 
what is this " democracy " you would have safe- 
guarded.'' One American says it is providing good 
jobs; another, free schools; still another, assurance 
to the aristocrats that they may choose rulers that 
can rule ! And so it goes ! 

Frank Plaistead 
It's all that ! Come and see what our democracy 
is ! We are always glad to demonstrate it. You'll 



188 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

know then that it's worth extending over the wide 
world. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

All this protestation sounds very fine. Only it is 
so easy. Do you know that our Czars have made 
us speeches about peoples' rights, and that some of 
them were sincerely meant, too ! And in your freer 
countries politicians, like evangelists, are very use- 
ful to provide the public with appearances. You 
really can't blame us in old Europe for having our 
own opinions as to why America went to war. How 
did we know that it wasn't just because you had 
written certain notes to Germany and got out of 
patience with her at last ! 

Judge Semyonov 
That is too absurd, Michail Sergeivitch! It was 
more than that. 

Michail Sergeivitch 
Yes, I suppose so. There must be something more 
than hot blood back of the war. 

Frank Plaistead 
It's my opinion that bad blood is best let out. 
What do you think is back of the war. Professor? 
Hand us the anti-war dope of your non-patriots. 
You'll recognize its just weight when you see it fac- 
ing you cold. 

Michail Sergeivitch 
The cause of the war is not to be found in the 



WHOLE CLOTH 189 

Red, the White, the Green, and the Aquamarine 
Government Books — that much is certain. These 
nationalists, each accusing the other, speak out not 
even an image of the truth ! One set of warring 
powers may have a different system of registering or 
suppressing the popular will than another, but it was 
not over this, exactly, we all began fighting each 
other. The so-called democratic nations with whom 
Russia was in league certainly did not press it upon 
us at any rate, that we were fighting for any such 
purpose. I don't think we can escape it — the war 
had certain diplomatic origins. Each national 
group of leaders is struggling to maintain as much 
power for itself as possible. These leaders, repre- 
sented by the diplomats, are the money class and a 
blinded intelligentsia ; and as the war has progressed, 
there has emerged, more and more, class feeling: 
there has actually been a class-war arising out of 
the national wars and staring these determined lead- 
ers in the face. 

Frank Plaistead 
Our leaders are not the money-class ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Americans do not admit that their money-class has 
power; it may have less than the money-classes 
among some of their Allies ; the American money- 
class found it difficult to rally the whole people to 
the war, especially the people of its Western States 
— so Alexis learned in Germany. Wilson provided 
the high ideals sufficient to tease the people into war, 



190 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

and he was ably seconded by a majority of the In- 
telligentsia, which jumped to the war madness just 
as the Intelligentsia of England, Germany, and 
France had done. According to reports, the war- 
liatred enjoyed by the American ministers, pro- 
fesors, editors, and politicians was as virulent a 
specimen of the species as you would find in the older 
race-proud and race-hating nations of Europe. 
There were a few voices raised against the un- Amer- 
icanism of the war, but these were soon hushed by 
prompt and cruel punishment, social or really penal. 

Frank Plaistead 
Professor, how do you know of conditions in 
America? Surely you don't trust information 
Alexis picked up in Germany ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

No, I don't. Any more than I should trust Amer- 
ican information about the Germans in war time. 
The information I rely upon about America comes 
from talks with various Americans. To be sure, one 
was an I. W. W. and two were Socialists, but the 
others had all the marks of American aristocracy. 
One, indeed, supports the war on the narrow ground 
that after all the world was in for a cleansing by 
war, and America, being in it now, will be a weight 
toward the right solution it brings, which all radicals 
are going to welcome. 

Judge Semyonov 
That American's is my own feeling as to America's 



WHOLE CLOTH 191 

object. She will exert the right influence; through 
Mr. Wilson's fourteen points, for example. Cer- 
tainly we Russians will find America our best friend 
at the peace conference ; we should be glad she is in 
the war. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Her aims do go a certain distance. 

Judge Semyonov 
Why not take America's aims as the best, and 
cease cavil! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Perhaps they are the best Democracy can offer. 
We welcome them for what they are. 

Alexis 
And Wilsonian " Victory ! " 

Frank Plaistead 
I confess I don't see the value of long words and 
philosophy when a nation fights for its honor. We 
fight because we had to. If when you are returning 
home to-night, a man accosts you with a raised fist, 
you will not stop to inquire whether he is intoxicated 
or in need of bread; you will strike first and strike 
hard. Plain, isn't it ! So why all this chatter about 
the money-class in America. We haven't any 
money-class ; that is, I mean to say, our money-class 
has no political power ; in fact, it is so powerless, that 
when it becomes known that the rich men want any- 
thing done, the people get on their uppers and vote 



192 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the thing down, no matter what the merits. Look 
at the great hold Bryan has had upon the common 
people for years, simply because he posed as a 
people's leader. And as for an intelligentsia, Amer- 
icans would laugh at you to hear mention of such a 
thing. I have heard you, Professor, carry on what 
a mess of things your Russian intelligentsia has made 
by dabbling in politics ; you say they have failed 
utterly to understand the masses. 

MlCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Utterly \ They are like an insoluble chemical 
floating on top of a liquid. The two bodies have 
diff*erent properties ! 

Frank Plaistead 
Well, you can believe me, we in the good old U. S. 
don't intrust our important business to intellectuals. 
The men who are running the war for us in commit- 
tees down in Washington are not intellectuals. Our 
Government is run on business principles. Our peo- 
ple prefer a good sewer-system to an oratorical con- 
test. You Russians stand at the street-corners and 
harangue for hours ; we elect representatives to do 
our talking for us. 

Judge Semyonov 
Yes, the representatives do the talking and the 
political bosses build the sewers, receiving commis- 
sions from the contractors, their personal acquaint- 
ances. 

{All laugh; even Plaistead himself. He 



WHOLE CLOTH 193 

has BuRTSEv, the waiter, bring cigars which 
he offers around the table. Each man ac- 
cepts one except Alexis Petrovich. The 
lad is immersed in his own thought, his chin 
resting on one hand, the other hand now and 
then getting into his hair and rumpling it.) 

Judge Semyonov 
I don't see why you need to despise your American 
intellectuals, Frank. The English do better by their 
men of thought. It is said that the men of Oxford 
and Cambridge rule Britannia; that the Oxford 
Union trains for Parliament. But with you Amer- 
icans, I believe there is no great appreciation for the 
man of cultivated thinking and sentiment. I hesi- 
tate to hold your educational system accountable 
for the banality and bombast of your state and 
congressional representatives. You boast of your 
free schools, but I have yet to learn that they turn 
out men of free thought ! 

Frank Plaistead 
Well, I don't think we should care for your Rus- 
sian specimens of free-thought : loose nuts wrenching 
themselves loose from their place, and clogging the 
machinery! The educational system of a Democ- 
racy should turn out men with common warm social 
feelings, men united in heart and mind for the 
rational progress of the public. 

AUEXIS 

A machine that turns out one hundred million 



194; SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

copies of one pattern, all thrilling with a sense of 
duty to the rational progress of the public! It is 
your university man, I understand, Mr. America, 
that is often most banal of all. His school loyalties 
are ubiquitous and childish ; they consist of the fond 
memories of his club and his football teams ; his par- 
ticular college is for definite reasons superior to all 
others. The classmate who is not interested in all 
this boyish controversy and self-congratulation is 
looked upon with suspicion. Even at the best 
schools, the man of cultivated thinking and sentiment 
is appreciated much as is the man who makes the 
prayer at a dedicatory service; he is occasional, 
there is found a use for him only rarely. 

Taking it as a whole, our modern school system 
everywhere reflects pretty well our economic system. 
With the hardness and immorality of business go the 
hypocrisy and shallowness of school; both love rule 
and precedent; business has its own reasons for 
being conservative, and school has its own reasons 
for respecting the dictates of business. At school 
one learns a thousand proprieties and exactitudes to 
observe; the excellence of the national regimes past, 
present and future; the divine right of the wealthy 
to own! Once this scale of values is committed to 
heart the graduate is generous in giving advice to the 
unlearned: he knows just what to think and to do, 
because it all happened so once before. 

Worst of all is the pride bred at school : the belief 
that all this foolish teaching is the sum of all that 
one can know, and that if one does not persevere and 



WHOLE CLOTH 195 

receive a diploma, he will never be an associate of 
those holding superior rank. Such pride is a mock- 
ery of the humility of the truly intelligent man, who 
holds no one in disesteem for ignorance, alone — 
ignorance which is accidental.' Indeed, the ignor- 
ance of the street and of the work-bench has certain 
biologic-political value. Certainly I regret any 
over-individualism in my own education which would 
prevent my making quick contacts with those not 
trained my way. 

Pasha, the Genti^man 
Don't worry about your education, Alexis. 
You're a boy yet. One can see you have had no 
experience with the world. It's time now for you 
to break from the leading strings of Michail Sergei- 
vitch. From him you have learned the Greek, and 
doubtless well. From him, you have taken these 
theories you have just expressed about schools — and 
many other theories. But now you must know the 
world. Have some fun, the fun of doing things ! 
You will learn the real secrets of living, so. Veritas 
in vino ! Books and schoolmasters — with all apolo- 
gies (bowing to the Professor) — are a weariness 
to the flesh. 

Michail Sergeivitch 

Veritas in vino! Pasha, I acknowledge for 
Alexis and myself the jibe you toss at us. True! 
education over wine-cups is not the worst ; especially 
if that means the intellectual advantages of sympos- 



196 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

ium ; the digestion of the criticism of outspoken com- 
rades. 

Judge Semyonov 
We want nothing short of the best education, 
Teacher. And do you not agree that if we provide 
this, the good state will come in its own good time? 

MicHAii, Sergeivitch 
I do not agree! Rather, I say the new education 
can come only with the good state. The one must 
come along contemporaneously with the other. 
That is the way I put it. We already have the 
" best education," bundles of it ! But the new realist 
will have no use for this present notion of acquisitive 
education: a teaching to possess knowledge like the 
Chinese, to store it in the brain for exotic emerg- 
encies ; to classify and to catalogue, arbitrarily. He 
desires self-education: education from within, not 
from without ; education without terms and holidays, 
without dictatorial designations, without prejudice 
against training the hand and the eye, in favor of 
long training in language rooms. The social invid- 
iousness, embedded at present in the schools, is an 
inevitable reflection of the society in which they exist 
— this society wants the " best education," just as 
you do. Judge Semyonov. The new education — 
pure, direct, and natural — cannot exist except 
under a new social order. It will come when it is 
wanted, when it is deserved. The Bolshevik does not 
want bourgeois education. 



WHOLE CLOTH 197 

Judge Semyonov 
The Bolshevik does not want culture taught in 
the schools. He refuses to employ the old bourgeois 
teachers. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

The Bolshevik does not venerate traditional cur- 
ricula. The concern of self-education is to provide 
youth with stimulating contacts. Youth takes 
unto itself all too quickly what it finds within reach. 
No one is proper to teach in the new school who has 
knowledge all laid-out and ready-made to fit, like 
splints, the grooves of growing minds. The citizens 
of the Bolshevik state must be trained to think; a 
fortiori, the teacher must think; a man will not 
lightly become a teacher to young realists ! And 
since the stuff of teaching is imitable human beings 
— the teacher teaching himself — the state must 
select teachers with the greatest care. Certain old 
bourgeois teachers do not meet this requirement. 
However, they might still be employed, if only out 
of pity, provided they did not seek the overthrow 
of the very foundation of the new school, the new 
state. 

Alexis 

Yet it seems incredible that that class in the state 
which is the best trained — yes, even those men of 
the diploma school I railed at — must not be the 
ones to depend upon in such a time of the nation's 
stress as at present. May not the remedy for the 
shortcomings of this class be some such revolution 
in the methods of teaching young aristocrats as you 



198 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

have intimated, teacher? The question back of my 
seeming conservatism on this point is : how, if the old 
aristocracy failed to make use of its advantages of 
superior training, can we expect the Proletariat to 
profit more by its "social equality" training? I 
suppose the answer to this question is involved in the 
very issue we debate ; shall there be social equality or 
shall there not be ? 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

That is the issue f In the new social order men 
and women will not be counted in the class of " aris- 
tocrats " according to their inheritance, but accord- 
ing to their merits. 

Frank Plaistead 
Professor, did I not hear you call yourself an 
aristocrat, a while ago? And you speak now of a 
*' class of aristocrats ! " I supposed the Bolsheviks 
would not allow classes of any kind. 

MicHAiii Seegeivitch 

We are becoming confused. Words are impeding 
the progress of our argument. I see it is now 
necessary to give the definition of Bolshevism, full- 
blown, and then to trace out its philosophy, subse- 
quently, step by step. Bolshevism — if you must 
have it shorn of all the consolations of its political 
philosophy — is the instant breaking up of the 
present class system and the establishment in its place 
of a dictatorship of the Proletariat. 



WHOLE CLOTH 199 

Voice From the Crowd 
Why should one class rule all the rest of us, Pro- 
fessor? I am studying to be a Felsher Doctor,^ 
and — 

Another Voice 
The Felsher Doctors are forming a union ! 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
This protest of one-class rule is but another at- 
tempt to evade the main issue. The Proletariat, by 
the implications of Bolshevik philosophy, is not one 
class ; it is the body of all who exert themselves for, 
or contribute to, the commonwealth any value, mate- 
rial or spiritual. 

Voice From the Crowd 
Long live the Proletariat ! 

Judge Semyonov 
The implications of Bolshevik philosophy! Phil- 
osophy.? Fool-osophy! Your Bolshevik thinks 
only of one man — himself! He thinks only of the 
moment. For long views, for ideals you must go to 
the intelligent classes. Bad, selfish people you will 
find among them; nevertheless, will you not admit, 
Teacher, that as a class they are capable of acting 
for the good of " the whole " ; that when they do act 
against that interest they are generally unconscious 
of wrong and act from good motives ? 
1 The Felsher Doctors in Russia are men nurses. 



200 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

One's motives are generally good: nature sees to 
that J 

Judge Semyonov 

Then isn't the simple remedy for the present ills 
of our states, to let in light ; show our upper classes 
the larger goods they have not hitherto compre- 
hended; convince them that the difference between 
them and their unwashed brethren is not so great as 
they have thought? Get the truth spoken — your 
truth of history, of government? 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

No ! The remedy is not so simple. The class 
holding the political power to-day cannot see things 
except through diplomatic lenses. The younger men 
in this class would only in part receive the truth; 
many of this part who did receive the truth would, 
like our own Russian intelligentsia, refuse to trust 
the lower classes with the truth: rather, they would 
hold it to themselves till the lower classes should all 
have become upper classes — this moderate policy is 
the reverse of Bolshevism and it seems to me to be 
an impossible one, as many of them must know : there 
are not at present goods enough in the world to make 
all the low like the high. If we trust to the enlight- 
enment of these present rulers, the world will con- 
tinue on with the present injustices. The upper 
class has proved that it will not act with class- 
unselfishness. Therefore we must give up the illu- 
sions regarding it which we again and again have 



WHOLE CLOTH 201 

built up; we must remove every vestige of these old 
class divisions, destroy them root and branch: the 
upper class, economically, must become lower class 
and share material power with all men and women. 

Voice Fkom the Crowd 
We've had enough of our money-lords ! I say, 
sweep the house clean! Let us not leave past dirt 
to remind the new tenant what a pig-sty his house 
has been. 

Another Voice 
Kill the stufFed-pigs ! We'll give man for man. 
If it is to be a war of extermination, it's easy win- 
ning for us ! 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Your Bolshevik friends. Teacher, are tracing out 
the implications of Bolshevik philosophy; isn't that 
so.'* 

Judge Semyonov 
Michail Sergeivitch, are you so sure that the upper 
class is not willing to share power with the people, 
anticipating far in advance their real capability of 
self-government ? 

Michail Sergeivitch 
If I were not sure twelve months ago, events since 
have made me terribly sure ! 

Alexis 
What events, Teacher? 



202 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Fresh history I Affairs in Finland, in Ukraine, 
here in European Russia ! In Ukraine, the upper 
class, though badly beaten and relegated by the Red 
Guard, was determined not to let the power reside in 
its own people: it refused to cooperate with them 
and put at their service its own trained abilities. It 
preferred to coquet, first with French, and then 
with German class-help. As for Great Russia's 
bourgeoisie, I say only one word, Miliukov: for his 
kaleidoscopic performances he should be given mot- 
ley to wear ! In Finland, the White Guards tri- 
umphed with the aid of a German army. In revenge 
for the presumption of the Reds — by all accounts 
clearly the majority — the White Guards set out to 
suppress them by wholesale imprisonment, execution, 
exile, and the harshest measures of martial law: no 
meetings of workmen; not a Socialist organization 
allowed to raise its head — though before the war, 
the Socialist Party was the largest party in the 
country. The White Guards of Finland did all these 
things, they said, in defense of law and order ! 

Mao*! From the Crowd 
What is a White Guard without a Hun or an 
Englishman behind him! He loves foreigners more 
than his own brothers. 

Judge Semyonov 
Ivan Leonivitch, don't exhibit your foolishness in 
public ; go home and get my bath ready ! 



WHOLE CLOTH 203 

(Ivan' Leonivitch, servant to Judge 
Semyonov, leaves the crowd.) 

MlCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

And here is something to bear in mind, though it 
be unpleasant. Finland, though small, though this, 
though that, is not a peculiar people : its Red Guards 
are like lower class everywhere ; its White Guards are 
like upper class everywhere. Particularly like the 
situation in Finland during the revolutionary regime 
is the Great Russia of to-day under the Bolshevik 
regime; and this let me say unreservedly, as a warn- 
ing or a hope, as j^ou prefer: if the upper class in 
Great Russia, especially, if with the aid, direct or 
indirect, of foreigners, overcomes a government of its 
own people, the lower class will mark that day and 
remember it and its lesson. 

Several Voices in the Crowd 
Hear ! Hear ! 

Frank Plaistead 
Isn't foreign intervention better than the terror 
which exists in Russia to-day, which exists right here 
in Nishni Novgorod? I may be arrested as I go 
home to-night, and what boots it, if, after spending 
the night in jail, some commissar informs me unc- 
tuously to-morrow morning that it was all a mistake ! 

Judge Semyonov 
The intervention of the Americans, at least, would 
not have the reactionary character of the German 



204* SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

help to the Ukraine and to the Finnish White 
Guards. 

Pasha, the GentI/Eman 

Why say intervention of the Americans, " at 
least"? How least are these intervening, "non- 
interventionist " Americans ! Now, God knows, we 
should be glad enough of any assistance in getting 
rid of these Jewish despots of ours and in setting up 
a government of real Russians, as glad as were our 
brothers in the Ukraine and in Finland; but why 
" the Americans," especially I If it is because they 
would insure a " democratic " government, which is 
their specialty, I believe, I, for one, at any rate, am 
sure they would be " least " the proper nation to help 
us. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 

You confess yourself reactionary ! 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Thanks, yes ! What decent man in Russia is not 
reactionary to-day ! 

Judge Sejmygnov 
Don't take any stock, Frank, in what Pasha says 
about democracy. He belongs to the " Russia 
Party," which has the patriotic slogan : " Russia for 
the Russians." By Russians they mean only blue- 
blooded Russians. That is why they are the first to 
cry that there are no " real Russians " governing 
the country to-day. His party is a back number. 
We Social-Revolutionaries believe in a democracy 
developing gradually into such socialism as the 



WHOLE CLOTH 205 

initiatory steps prove to be practicable. Perhaps 
not exactly the American brand of democracy — we 
understand that you are governed by politicians, 
Frank ! 

Frank Plaistead 
We have the government we want I 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
So we in Russia have always had the government 
4 we want. So have the Germans ! They will have 
the Hohenzollerns as long as they want them. 

Alexis 
By that kind of logic, slaves have the masters they 
want ! I don't believe the Germans want the Hohen- 
zollerns any longer. If you had lived among, and 
talked with, the Germans in the later war years, as 
I have done, you would become convinced they are 
going to develop a wonderful democracy. I tell you 
the German people are thinking; they have learned 
their -lesson. Certain writers in the Allied countries 
have expressed pity for the deceived German people ; 
well, the Germans, in the meantime, believe the people 
in Allied countries similarly deceived. The German 
people begins to admit it has been deceived, and it is 
struggling for its own kind of " democracy." The 
German " Social Democrats," who are coming into 
power soon, are " Democrats," pretty narrowly 
" Democrats." They have no use for Bolshevism, 
and if it raises its head among them, they will be 
willing to ally themselves even with the capitalists in 
order to fight it. 



206 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

{The people of the park are in commotion, 
all heads turned upward. It is something to 
do with the hydroplanes. The whirring of a 
motor sounds quite near. The people in the 
cafe go out into the park. One of the avia- 
tors is practicing a njew feat. From his 
machine he lets loose a flock of pink slips, 
•which trail down on the wind like a shower of 
sparks from a large piece of fireworks. A 
slip which falls near the cafe is picked up hy 
a mam, in the ujniform of an Austrian war 
prisoner, standing near the men from the 
corner table. He reads it to them: "Prole- 
tarie vsekh stran, Soedeenaietis! " ; Workmen 
of all countries, umte! The Austrian ac- 
cepts an invitation from CHASTiiEEVY to join 
the men at the corner table in a drink. The 
waiter brings seven beers.) 

BURTSEV, THE WaITER 

{Addressing the Austrian.) 
Tavarish, I wish we could drop some of them pink 
notes over on the people of your country. Guess, 
from the reports 'bout the strikes and so forth, your 
workmen are most ready to join ourn. 

Carl Mardinburg 

(Large, tall, and gladiatorial! A frank blue eye. 

He wears the uniform of a non-commissioned officer, 

kept neat and clean. On his coat is a large iron 

cross. His Russian, learned as a prisoner, is better 



WHOLE CLOTH 207 

than Plaistead's. ) I am not a Tavarish, Waiter! 
The first Russian Red Guard that tries to fly over 
our territory with such propaganda will discover 
that we have excellent anti-aircraft guns! 

Pasha, the Gentueman 
Perhaps Herr Mardinburg is one of these " Ger- 
man Democrats ! " 

Carl Mardinburg 
I am an Austrian Social-Democrat I I am a 
Socialist, a fighting Socialist ; I have been a candidate 
of my party for deputy to the Reichstag. We will 
not recognize the Bolsheviks as good Socialists-; they 
have traded upon our hard-earned gains, and bring 
our projects to bankruptcy. They block progress! 

Burtsev, the Waiter 
What is "progress," Gospadeen? 

Carl Mardinburg 
" Progress " is approaching the state of Karl 
Marx. We Socialists expect to win our battle by 
negotiation with the capitalistic classes. We- have 
been 'struggling with them since 184'8; but at last we 
have assurances of a genuine parliamentary govern- 
ment; this much is won by our patience during the 
war. 

Frank Plaistead 
(^Has been undecided just how to take the presence 
of the Austrian till his last words.) You're dam 
hootin', the war will fix you people up, all right ! 



208 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Just you see if you aren't rid of your autocracy! 
That's what we Americans are in this war for. 

Carl Mardinburg 
Thanks, we have not asked for your help. We 
should much prefer anything we have got to what 
you might give us. Some of you folks who are 
anxious to set up freedom all over the globe had 
better look first to home. You in America are the 
most capitalistic-ridden of all! Wages, in propor- 
tion to purchase-value of money, have fallen in the 
United States during the period since 1905, seven 
to eight per cent. Sixty-five per cent, of your peo- 
ple receive an annual income less than $200 per cap- 
ita, and have practically no property except their 
clothes and furniture. Only sixteen per cent, of 
your wage-earners are in unions. Our workers, on 
the other hand, are nearly all organized. We con- 
sider it important first of all to present a solid front 
of laborers within the nation ; after that it will be 
becoming for us, perhaps, to rant about the solidar- 
ity of the workers of the world as do our Russian 
brothers. 

BURTSEV, THE WAITER 

Ah ! you do reckon us brothers, then. 

Frank Plaisteax) 
My German friend — 

Carl Mardinburg 
I am an Austrian, sir ! 



WHOLE CLOTH 209 

Frank Plaistead 
Certainly, Austrian! So much the better! My 
Austrian brother, before you attack capital, why 
don't you first interest yourself in Democracy. 
Democracy must precede Socialism. Therefore, in 
helping to establish democracy you further your own 
cause. Why don't you workingmen of Austria help 
the Czechs and the South-Slavs in their struggle for 
liberty ? 

Carl Mardinburg 
We have struggled for the liberties of our brother- 
workmen in the different parts of the Empire long 
before you Allied Democrats became interested in 
their lot. But we don't wish them to be separated 
politically for the same reasons that you do : separa- 
tion would weaken Socialists of all parts of our coun- 
try in their economic struggle with the Entente Im- 
perialisms. If we are beaten in this war, our work- 
ing classes will have put upon them huge indemnities, 
and our organizations, the best and most soundly 
socialistic in the world, will be ruined. So it is that 
we Social Democrats believe that we fight not only 
for defense of country, but for defense of socialism, 
as well. 

Michail Sergeivitch 
It seems to me that by your attitude you Social 
Democrats are helping to ruin both country and 
socialism ! You are the instruments of your ruling 
class, which, loving country as little as they love you, 
yet persuade you that you must fight for what they 



210 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

call the country's defense. Be not deceived; it is 
their own defense, and the defense of their " system " 
against the ruling class and its system, in the enemy 
countries, you fight ! Your capitalists have deceived 
you for long by keeping you workmen in different 
parts of the Austrian Empire at logger-heads with 
each other; and now they have you fighting against 
the workmen of other nations. 

Carl Mardinburg 
But we have nothing against the worhmen in the 
allied countries; it is only against the imperialists. 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
Your enemy workmen say exactly the same thing ; 
with a substitution of the word " autocrat " for the 
word " imperialist." Moreover, since it is true, as 
you say, that your workmen in the Central Powers 
are the better organized, it was on you that we 
expected the new light first to fall. I say I am dis- 
appointed in you. You haven't had faith in your 
brother-workmen of the world! 

Carl Mardinburg 
Our brother-workmen weren't sufficiently organ- 
ized. We have had to fight for them as well as for 
ourselves. We are realists. I suppose it is on your 
Russian workman the light has fallen! 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
Our Russian workmen have the better realism. 
They believed in you and stopped fighting you. 



WHOLE CLOTH 211 

That was a piece of the new realism. The Russian 
brothers did their part. Why didn't you do yours? 
You did repudiate the Brest-Litovsk treaty, but at 
the same time you have continued to support with a 
vote of war credits, the government that is crushing 
us with an iron heel ; you continue to bargain blindly 
with the oligarchy that is shamefully misrepresenting 
you and filling nearly every one of your homes with 
mourning for needless bloodshed; all for sake of 
your will-o'-wisp principle of negotiation ; your 
party leaders seek narrow party ends ; the big oppor- 
tunity to lead the workmen of the world, they fail to 
see. Many in your class and out of it, in Germany 
and in the enemy countries as well, are ready to 
work with German and Austrian Socialist leaders 
and help obtain for them all they seek and more — 
if only the light would fall upon them; if only they 
would act as independently as they have spoken! 
But lack of faith paralyzes them. The big oppor- 
tunity will be seized by the leaders of a new body, the 
German and Austrian Bolsheviks ; then we shall see 
which is the better reahsm ! 

Alexis 
If some of the sturdy people I know join the Ger- 
man and Austrian Bolsheviks, there is going to be a 
revolution much better executed than ours! 

Judge Semyonov 
But none of your thinking Qermans, Alexis, are 
going to become Bolsheviks. Indeed, they may share 



212 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

their privileges otherwise. I think better of our 
class than you and Michail Sergeivitch do. 

Alexis 
That is because you do not ask so much of it. 
You are content that it should always be looking 
after itself alone ! The rallying of a few of our class 
to Bolshevism would improve the quality of its leader- 
ship and change the character of the movement so 
that some of us might unreservedly cooperate in it. 
It will be for us to show the Bolsheviks that not all 
rich men are money-ridden, and that not all uni- 
versity-men are brain-warped ; that, to the contrary, 
men of the upper classes may be of like passions with 
themselves. 

Judge Semyonov 
" Of like passions " ! It is for this reason of like 
passions, of one class as of another, that I prefer the 
intelligentsia to rule: they have no more weaknesses 
than another class, and they do know something. If 
the mass has exclusively the power, it will be as selfish 
and as narrow as the Capitalists. 

Michail Sergeivitch 
It will be, unless there is a new counteracting social 
morality at work in Bolshevism! Bolshevism is 
ruthless. It can hardly succeed without frightful 
and shameful wreckage, poor starts, and shoddy 
work. The naked political truths with which it 
deals, are two-edged swords that will slay the careless 
wielder. In righting economic injustices a tempta- 



WHOLE CLOTH 213 

tion Is placed before the opportunist Bolshevik. 
Already the Proletariat leaders are too much 
obsessed with ideas of the simple transference of 
wealth from one class to another. As they succeed 
to authority, they must be warned against the subtle 
abuse of power and the insidious corruption of riches. 
And woe to them if they betray a double trust ! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
I don't think the workers will double-cross their 
fellows. It would be breaking the first rule of the 
game. The difficulty will be to teach the new game. 
It will be natural for many of the Proletariat to play 
according to the rules of the rotten old game, which 
was the trading of favors all of a money character. 
You see we are all saturated with this money spirit. 
I've nothing against rich men. If only they would 
use their money as trustees ! The damage to the 
commonwealth is not so much that some men have 
the money as that the money has them. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
The money gets into the hands of the cleverest 
men — and is spent by them for the good of all ! 

MiCHAIL SerGEIVITCH 

It is all very well to talk about trusteeship ! That 
is laissez-faire 1 We have tried that. The present 
social stratification of society is the result. Some- 
thing contradictory to the crudest notions of justice ! 
We must try something else 1 As with biological 
changes, so with social changes, it is a case of 



214 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

" must." Those blessed by the amazing inequalities 
of the old system " must " give way ! The war has 
hastened that " must " many years, by throwing the 
truth on a living screen of dying and blasted men. 
Our generation is so benumbed by commercialism 
that we are unable to measure just how much com- 
mercialism threw us into the war and just how much 
the war has pulled us up out of commercialism. But 
one thing is evident, we have a guilty conscience 
about our social inequality, and each party is falling 
all over itself, proposing immediate reparation to 
those not favored by capitalism — your conservative 
talks social amelioration as loudly as the next man! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Teacher, do you hold the opinion with some that 
the war is a punishment for the commercialism of our 
generation.'' 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

I ought not say — I am of this generation, my- 
self ! But that this war is a field on which the mov- 
ing spirit of our present civilization has found its 
apotheosis and best exemplification, I cannot doubt. 
And I think we must admit that money-making plays 
no insignificant part in the modern spirit. To build 
bigger bams is the ideal. Success is measured by 
material prosperity. The young man may have his 
visions, perchance, while at college. A year out of 
college, he sees only the glamour of what all men strive 
for. He hardens and nerves himself till he too has 



WHOLE CLOTH 215 

acquired certain goods; then, in the degree to which 
he has become " successful," he is at ease, cushioned 
by material things. And having employed the 
boundless energy of youth in acquiring this standard 
of comfort, he has been delimiting his interests till 
he comes to a point where he can no longer adjust 
himself to the new; ignorant of the brave secrets of 
Youth, he despises it; he becomes conservative at 
thirty, say ! Out of the men schooled with these 
ambitions, few can be recruited to take up the tasks 
of the new political realism. Such men live within 
their own so-called laissez-faire realism. Talk with 
these men about it and you will discover all sorts of 
odd fancies and inconsistencies, which crop up, one 
by one — the more particularly if your conversation 
is with a man old in the system, who has been luius- 
ually successful. So, I say, and it is only just now, 
war-taught, I say it : the present class divisions 
" must " be erased. With surprising rapidity will 
make their appearance new class divisions according 
to the deep natural differences between men. The 
present division into richer and poorer is false alto- 
gether ! God makes men this and that ; He never 
makes them rich and poor. He never fore-ordained 
it that some should be blessed with power and oppor- 
tunities by the very reason of being rich men. 

Judge Semyonov 
Surely you will not rail, as does this privileged 
press of ours, at the Bourgeoisie ! The Bourgeoisie 
are the intelligent and useful people, the plain bul- 



216 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

wark of society. A country is just so strong as its 
middle-class. 

MiCHAlL SeRGEIVITCH 

I hesitate to say it, Judge Piotr Vassilievitch ; I 
hesitate, because you will not understand me, but I 
do say : " Away with the Bourgeoisie ! " I do share 
with the Bolsheviks a hatred of everything Bour- 
geois ! 

Chastueievy, the Artist 

Teacher, there must be a great deal behind what 
you say ! I cannot yet comprehend how you can 
think the thoughts of raw men. There must be a 
great deal behind what you say ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

There is my whole life behind it ! ... I say this is 
not the time for compromise. Middle-class-ism has 
failed egregiously ! Let this war be its last, as it is its 
consummate, orgy ! The Bourgeoisie exemplifies the 
concentration of pride in riches. When confronted 
with the necessity of a choice, it prefers Mammon. 
Almost any pride is more sufFerable than " purse- 
pride " ; pride of country, pride of strength, beauty, 
or mind — all these express durable values. But to 
sit self-satisfied with the possession of house and land 
is of all abominations the most damnable! Why 
pride in house? The owner did not plan or build it. 
He drove a bargain with a good architect. Not a 
slab, not a stroke of paint in the house stands to 
the owner's credit. But when he takes another rich 



WHOLE CLOTH 217 

man through it and the guest enumerates its excel- 
lent points, the owner expands with elation, and takes 
to himself the glory of the good work. Deluded 
fool ! the echoes in the wide corridors mock him for his 
emptiness ! Or consider pride in dress ! The lady 
has taken a fashionable dressmaker to counsel; she 
has procured materials of high cost ; she is lavish in 
order that the gown may reflect her station, or a 
little anticipate her station. Her own personal 
beauty and grace, if she happens to have them, are 
mocked by her vanity. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Riches are not always a mockery to their possess- 
ors. Rich persons may do for the public what it 
could never afford to do for itself. They may make 
of their possessions collections of the beautiful 
objects in the world for all to enjoy. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

But who appointed these persons to be public 
benefactors.? By what justice shall a Rockefeller 
or a Rothschild give or withhold? 

Judge Semyonov 
How can you blame the rich for being what they 
are ! Why shouldn't they control their wealth till 
the proper time, when, by graduated laws preventing 
great suffering to the innocent rich, excess wealth 
can be disbributed.'' 

MicHAiL Sergeivitch 
We do not blame the rich for the whole system, 



218 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

nor do we expect them individually to surrender 
control of their share under it. But, on the other 
hand, when we come collectively to abolish inequal- 
ities, the rich must not expect to be shown favors. 
They are not anaemic ! I suppose you look upon 
the laws forcing the Bourgeoisie to work as the re- 
finement of cruelty. In Russia where our upper 
class is exceptionally idle, I hold such laws especially 
commendable. They impress upon the Bourgeoisie 
the reality of the wiping out of class distinctions. 
For the laws are not that the rich shall work; they 
read that all shall work. There should be no " rich " 
to devise " fatigue-duty " for ; to legislate for, to 
graduate taxes for! Let there be one class, call it 
what you will: the proletariat, the voters, the com- 
munity! When there is only one class, the talk 
about the harmony of the classes, and the sweet 
dreams of the union of capital and labor, will be out 
of fashion. 

Alexis 
You would have capitalism go smash I 

Frank Plaistead 
Abolish capital! Abolish the whole blame shoot- 
ing-match of society ! Impossible \ Even your sav- 
age owned his own tomahawk. 

MiCHAIL, SeKGEIVITCH 

But " your savage " didn't own the hunting woods 
nor the fishing grounds. It is the possession of 
capital over and above individual need that I mean 



WHOLE CLOTH 219 

by " capitalism " : the ownership of one man greater 
than the ownership of another man in such a degree 
that the greater owner can be termed a " rich man." 
The abolition of capitalism does not mean the inter- 
ruption of all property rights, nor does it put a tax 
upon the different forms of saving. It does not 
bring to an end the classes of merchants, bankers, 
and lawyers ; the merchant becomes a better merch- 
ant, the lawyer a better lawyer ; the property of each 
is handled, however, subject to the new understanding 
of social equality. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
H. G. Wells says that we are not to tell the rich 
young man to go and sell all that which he hath and 
give to the poor. He must keep it, rather, as a 
sacred trust. And if any rich man is not willing to 
handle his riches as a trust, he must surrender it 
without a day's delay. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

I prefer Jesus to Wells, there ! In most respects 
we cannot improve upon the communism of Jesus. 
Jesus said, " It is easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the 
Kingdom of God." There is no reservation made 
that rich mqn may enter the Kingdom as trustees. 
The language of Jesus is strong. Such language is 
not used in the churches to-day ; the gospel has been 
interpreted by a commercially-minded clergy for a 
commercially-minded laity. Seeking to commend 
Christianity to their pew-holders, the clergy have it 



220 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

revealed to them that the whole sum of the teaching 
of Jesus is symbolical. They promise their Sunday- 
frock congregations that their personal consecration 
to Jesus is a blanket insurance for their earthly 
goods : it does not matter how one gets money ; only 
one must do good with it; in so doing he will be 
rewarded by the prayers of those who receive his 
charity, etc. The Bolshevik takes Jesus at his 
word ; he finds the religious message of Jesus all cant 
without a literal interpretation of his social com- 
mandments. Jesus would not compromise with the 
rich man; neither will the Bolshevik! Jesus made 
his social teaching the beginning of the wisdom he 
would show unto his followers. The Bolshevik 
makes the creation of social equality the first statute 
of the new realism! 

The horror with which men look upon the intro- 
duction of social equality is an index of the thinness 
of their blood ! The rich man who is sincere in main- 
taining that he holds his wealth in trust should have 
no fear of communism: for communism is but the 
extension of the principle of trusteeship. Nor need 
he fear he will not continue to be an aristocrat: he 
can demonstrate that he is one in some path of the 
spirit; and whatever abilities he possesses will shine 
of their own luster and be recognized, at least in the 
fraternity of the best men where he would be most 
proud to have them recognized. In Plato's Republic 
the leaders, the philosophers, were to live the most 
simple life; luxuries were to be the portion only of 
the artisans — they would corrupt the best men I 



WHOLE CLOTH 221 

Social equality is as essential to securing the richest 
life to the best men as it is to securing the richest 
life to those of few talents. The best man, busy- 
minded, will irk the distraction of the sheer display 
of badges of distinction. The full mind is not 
covetous. That those both of quick and dull mind 
should all have stomachs satisfied, what offense! 
Why should not men eat and wash and dress, and 
otherwise satisfy the demands of the body, upon 
terms of equality ? 

Frank Plaistead 
You seem just now to be saying the obvious. Pro- 
fessor ! The upper class is willing that all should be 
properly fed and clothed, but this still leaves a 
goodly surplus. The war has shown, that by well 
directed economies on the part of the people, each 
country can amass an unbelievably large sum for 
national needs. After the war, as before, this excess 
wealth, call it capital if you will, should go to men 
according to their ability, natural or acquired, to 
use it. Of course there will be injustices here and 
there ; that is inevitable under any system. But 
prove to me that another system will work with less 
injustices, all told, and I, for one, am willing to give 
it a fair trial! 

Alexis 
How can we know that a system will work till we 
have given it fair trial.'' The conditions upon 
which you would welcome reform, Mr. Plaistead, it 



222 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

seems to me, are the impossible or emasciJating con- 
ditions for which your conservative always stip- 
ulates. For my part, I see that the old must give 
way to the new ; I am persuaded by the good sense of 
social equality, as the Teacher defines it ; and, further, 
I believe that the world cataclysm has swept us a 
long distance toward it. But I cannot see my way 
to wish too violent changes ; for example, the striking 
down of capital in one generation. You are a great 
believer in social evolution. Teacher. Now, do you 
not think that social evolution, which has been phe- 
nomenally rapid in this century, will bring the full 
social equality which you describe, naturally and 
without countless suffering, even sooner than one 
would expect ! The strain of political upheaval has 
already cut thousands of individuals off from their 
past and lost them their happiness. Should we pUe 
misery on misery by forcing extreme steps.? Must 
not people accustom themselves to the new order 
gradually, in the meantime not too much pressed with 
the wearing demands of the new, to live out their 
lives normally and joyously ! This is where my chief 
quarrel with Bolshevism lies ; I suppose it is a small 
point and I am over-sensitive. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
And this is my quarrel with Bolshevism, Teacher; 
not a small point at all to my mind! The Bol- 
sheviks look hke barbarians to me. I fear they won't 
allow the beautiful things to remain in their places; 
and that, worse still, they won't allow me to continue 



WHOLE CLOTH 223 

to create beauty after the patterns in my own heart. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

The rottenness of the whole present state you all 
admit: Mr. America, you would patch it; and you, 
Alexis and Chastleevy, would temporize with it, give 
it leeway to bring us again on the rocks ! Plaistead, 
the ship is beyond repair, I assure you ; it is a rotten 
hulk; it will fall to pieces of no force at all in one 
good storm I And I assure you, Chastleevy, that the 
destruction done by the Bolsheviks is of the ugly, 
not of the beautiful! The beauty achieved at the 
expense of unbrotherliness is unhealthy and false. 
If 3'^ou have the enduring interests of art in mind, son, 
then accepting what must be, join in the Bolshevik 
movement ; be one to modify its character your way ; 
see the amazing beauties which by the quickening of 
all forms of social activity it will call forth! As 
for the amount of misery Bolshevism brings, I assure 
you, Alexis, that however great, it cannot be com- 
pared with the amount of happiness Bolshevism will 
bring ! Look out on the path now ! There is an 
illustration of what the Bolshevik " extreme steps " 
lead to. (MicHAiL, Seegeivitch points to a young 
man and a young woman slowly sauntering, arm in 
arm, past the cafe.) There is Anna Rudina enjoy- 
ing the evening with her lover, Nicolai Novamus- 
chenko. That pretty dress she wears was just made 
with her own hands : they say she is very proud of it, 
and so is Nicolai, too ; it is the result of lessons from 
her former dressmaker; her father cannot afford to 



224 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

have everything done for her any longer. Who says 
she is not happier in spite of her loss of caste I Her 
father had turned young Nicolai away from the 
house when he discovered that Anna was beginning to 
care for him. Poor boy, he was an exceptionally 
bright lad, but he was only her tutor. Now the 
social gulf fixed between the lovers has been bridged. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Now he is our distinguished commissar of educa- 
tion. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Whatever you may say. Pasha, there are those 
about town, even in the Rudin set, who freely declare 
that Nicolai is a better man for her than her father's 
choice, to wit, you, yourself, Pasha. Come now, 
Pasha, shouldn't you have been glad to take the girl 
— before she lost — caste, eh ! 

Judge Semyonov 
I can see in the misfortunes of the Rudins but one 
of many instances of the economic waste and ruin of 
Bolshevik rule. And it isn't for such as the Rudins 
the misfortune is greatest; it involves as well the 
Russian workmen and peasants. You believe me, 
gentlemen, when I say I have the interest of the work- 
men really at heart. 

BURTSEV, THE WaITER 

Yes, we believe you, Judge. We know that you 
were a leader in the fine work of the Novgorod Zem- 
stvo. And when there was much suifering from lack 



WHOLE CLOTH 225 

of work two winters ago, you organized a powder 
shop to provide idle men with employment. 

Judge Semyonov 
Well, Rudin was the citizen who contributed the 
most capital to the new powder shop, wasn't he? 
Now Rudin is a splendid fellow for all such under- 
takings. His judgment is unerring. It was he con- 
vinced us it was a powder plant we wanted: he said 
a powder plant would not entail exorbitant initial 
cost, and its output could be adjusted nicely to the 
amount of idle labor we found. 

Carl Mardinbueg 
You don't mean to argue that private capital is 
the only means of solving the problem of unemploy- 
ment. Certainly state registration of the unem- 
ployed, as we have it in Austria, is a more thorough 
remedy. 

Judge Semyonov 
I am not arguing any such point ! I merely wish 
to show what a waste of community wealth it is, to 
put a man like Feodor Rudin on the shelf as the 
Bolsheviks have done. There's his brewery now, idle, 
earning a living for no manl Almost every one of 
our factories has been crippled or absolutely ruined 
by these tavarishes ! 

Alexis 
Nonsense, Judge, not so bad as all that! Don't 
blame the Bolsheviks for all of the disorganization; 



226 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

it began under the old regime ; no one reckons just 
how far the old crowd brought the country to its 
last legs ! Rudin's brewery was already running 
down by the time of Kerensky. Anj^wray, the Bol- 
sheviks have closed all the breweries and distilleries 
on principle ; and I'm glad of it. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
And I don't like the principle! Good wine never 
harmed me. 

MiCHAIL, SeRGEIVITCH 

This cafe here, one of Rudin's smaller undertak- 
ings, is not suffering under Bolshevik management: 
we would all agree that Burtsev does very well with 
the place since his elevation from head-waiter to 
proprietor. Make money, too, don't you, Burtsev.'' 

Burtsev, the Waiter 
(Being free for a time from the needs of customers, 
has drawn a chair up to the table. He is an active 
little animal of twenty-five. He limps from a wound 
received in the war. His snappy black eyes show 
anger or pleasure quicMy.) Oh, I have no kick 
coming! I have got married, and Marsha and 
I, together, live better than I ever did, alone. If 
I do say it, the cafe is as well managed as before. 
But there's The Metropole, Rudin's large restau- 
rant up-town, that the waiters are running poorly. 
Vladimir, who was head-cook, doesn't know enough 
to run a restaurant. He doesn't understand buying, 
he charges too little, and he allows the place to go 



WHOLE CLOTH 227 

looking like a kitchen. He tries hard to make a 
success of his new responsibilities, but he and his 
wife are not so well off as before — and they ha,ve 
more children. Vladimir told me yesterday that he 
intends going to Broderensk, Rudin's old manager, 
for advice ; I think it would be better if he gave over 
to young Leonid Petrovich, the clerk. Petrovich 
after a little would be able to run a good restaurant, 
even one so fine as that The Metropole used to be. 

Judge Semyonov 
Man, aren't you sensible enough to see that society 
cannot afford experiments made by these second-rate 
leaders ! Society is most prosperous when indi- 
viduals are subordinated on an ascending scale. 
Bolshevism turns things upside down, puts mdn of 
inferior abilities on top. In any political realism 
I recognize, men must take the places assigned them 
by ability. I confess I don't understand the Teach- 
er's new realism ; it is Utopian fantasy, I think ! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
I understand realism not at all, either old or new ! 

Judge Semyonov 
Though skeptical of futuristic realism. Teacher, 
do not put me down as the friend of unregenerate 
laissez-faire. As a Socialist, I believe in many modi- 
fications of the natural competition in business. I 
advocate wiping out the present injustice in the 
distribution of wealth. The right to inherit I would 
leave only to dependents ; unearned increment I would 



228 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

prevent altogether. I advocate the utmost publicity 
in the dealings of all nations, large businesses, and 
organizations of a public nature. But, after all 
are given a fair chance and a fair start, a field where 
there is no underhanded dealing, no speculation 
markets and fraudulent advertising, — then I say let 
individual competition reign, and reveal what return 
individuality, and special aptitude and training, 
will give ! ) 

MlCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

These measures you Social-Revolutionaries pro- 
pose differ from Bolshevism only in degree and in 
the ardor and in the method with which they are to 
be prosecuted. You would have publicity of a 
defined sort: in the dealings of nations, large busi- 
nesses, and semi-public organizations. The new 
realism would have thrown on every department of 
human life and relations without limitation the glow- 
ing light of science : testing, weighing and comparing 
human valuations with infinite patience and utter 
lack of bias. For example, you say. Judge, you 
would grant the right to inherit to dependents only. 
The new social science would want to inquire further 
about these " dependents." 

Frank Plaistead 
Absurd ! That a man may not leave behind to 
his family what he has hard-earned. What incentive 
to work would remain, pray-f* 



WHOLE CLOTH 229 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Don't worry, Mr. America; your prospective 
father-in-law, Judge Semyonov, will arrange to have 
you and Sara Petrovna counted as " dependents." 
Anyway, Mamma Semyonov is not subject to any of 
these new theories, she will not scruple to leave her 
only child everytliing. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Your watchword, " Let individual competition 
reign," right enough, belongs to the old realism, 
Judge, argue as you will it doesn't. To say that 
competition is ordained by nature because found in 
the present economic system as it has gained head- 
way and taken its own course of development, is 
unfair to nature: the only natural thing about this 
system is its own cussed nature! It is unfair to 
say, when by certain laws of doUar-dom one dollar 
becomes two, that this is human nature. The new 
realism tries by looking behind the facts to see what 
human nature is. 

Alexis 
Yes, it is much easier to see statistics and trade 
balances than to see human facts — to see, for exam- 
ple, that the boy in the shop is contracting tuberculo- 
sis owing to the needlessly unsanitary character of 
his work. The defender of the old system says the 
system is made to fit human nature; it seems to me 
that, on the contrary, it is a case of human nature 
being made to fit The System: The System takes 
human nature as a raw product, and keeps it raw. 



230 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Your old-system man relies on the principles of 
simple, unenlarged, animal biology, to prove any 
thesis, be it in the realm of politics, of economics, 
or of philosophy; with his theory of competition he 
explains all progress in the past ; without competition 
in the future, he says, all will be waste and deteriora- 
tion. He ignores what part cooperation plays 
in the development of human habits ; he ignores, 
also, the fact that really intensive studies in the 
ps3'chology of collective feeling and thinking are yet 
to be made. There comes to my mind one of Chast- 
leevy's stories that shows well with what blind- 
ness and misplaced emphasis people are likely to 
work out survival laws. Tell us, Chastleevy, about 
the Suhona peasant woman's kasha ! 

Chastleevy, the Autist 
Teacher, I don't just see the bearing of that story ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Anyway, you tell it, Chastleevy, and I'll explain 
the bearing! 

Chastkeevy, the Artist 
Well ! This is the story of an experience out in 
the Suhona district one summer when I was visiting 
my friend Dmitri Constantinovich Krai. Dmitri 
and I were riding horseback over his estate one 
bright morning. The green river hills were cutting 
the blue sky sharply, and white fleecy clouds were 
sailing through the heaven as if just to add comfort 
and completeness to the picturesque landscape. We 



WHOLE CLOTH 231 

came on the river road to a little cottage, surrounded 
by out-buildings of thatch, which was a favorite 
stopping-place with Dmitri. The peasant's children 
gathered round us, and Dmitri Constantinovich, 
patting them on the head, drew from his pocket a 
box of sweets and gave it to a curly-headed daughter 
whose madonna face still hangs in my mind. Then 
arrived the busy housewife and invited us inside to 
drink tea. We accepted the invitation as a mat- 
ter of course, and I tasted the finest kasha I had 
ever known. " Your kasha is excellent," I said to 
the housewife ; " tell me, please, how you manage to 
cook it so tastily ! " 

" It is not the cooking, sir," she replied with a 
smile, " it is the grain which is excellent." 

" Tell my friend," interposed Dmitri Constan- 
tinovich, " how it is you grow such excellent grain." 
So she told me. 

" For many years," she began, " it was my man's 
custom to pick the largest kernels as seed grain on 
our own strips. He thought in this way he would 
improve the quality of the crops from year to year. 
And sure enough, every year the kernels were larger 
and larger, and my man thought how clever he was : 
his grain kernels were larger than any in the dis- 
trict. But I was not so pleased. I did not like the 
large kernels to eat. I found it more and more 
difficult to make tasty kasha. So I said to my man 
Gabriel : ' Gabriel, I do not like your large kernels ! 
I would rather have them small and tasty. Choose 
this year for our seed grain from lots which make 



232 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the tastiest kasha.' Gabriel in matters of cooking 
never disputed me; he heeded me, and planted the 
seed which I had selected. And the next spring he 
did likewise, and so on, till now our kasha is the 
tastiest kasha that jou will eat in the whole dis- 
trict." 

And now, good Teacher, I leave it to you to explain 
the parable of the Sul^ona peasant woman and the 
small and the large kernels ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

The story illustrates the folly of supporting pleas- 
ing points in view in politics by the theory of compe- 
tition. It is begging the question. It is confusing 
ends with means. To argue that the man who is 
richest, who is biggest for the number of barns he 
owns, is the best; to argue that the man won in a 
fair competition, therefore he must have the brains, 
he ought to succeed; that there is some justice in 
his obtaining power over others, — may be syllogistic, 
but it does not get us anywhere! 

Alexis 
What you say. Teacher, puts me in mind of cer- 
tain views expressed in a book I have at the moment 
in my pocket, a piece of the dead propaganda matter 
which the agents of the different nationalisms have 
struck off by the thousands of copies and distributed 
broadcast in Russia, especially during the Kerensky 
days — President Wilson's " The New Freedom." 
Let me read a few passages I have marked. {He 



WHOLE CLOTH 233 

draws from his pocJcet a pamphlet with closely printed 
lines, and reads, interpolating explanations.) 

" All the fair competition you choose, but no unfair 
competition of any kind. And then when unfair compe- 
tition is eliminated, let us see these gentlemen [the trust 
magnates] carry their tanks of water on their backs. 
All that I ask and all that I shall fight for [Wilson re- 
fers here to the campaign he was waging for the presi- 
dency] is that they shall come into the field against merit 
and brains everywhere. If they can beat other Ameri- 
can brains, then they have got the best brains. 

" I know, and every man in his heart knows, that the 
only way to enrich America is to make it possible for any 
man who has the brains to get into the game. I am not 
jealous of any business that has grown to that size 
[' grown' is his italics]. I am not jealous of any proc- 
ess of growth, no matter how huge the result, provided 
the result was indeed obtained by the processes of whole- 
some growth, which are indeed the processes of efficiency, 
of economy, of intelligence, of invention. 

" In New Jersey [the name of a state in which Wilson 
either was at the time, or had been, governor, I take 
it] . . . the corporations involved opposed the legisla- 
tion with all their might. They talked about ruin — 
and I really believe they did think they would be some- 
what injured. But they have not been. And I hear, I 
cannot tell you how many, men in New Jersey say: 
' Governor, we were opposed to you; we did not believe 
in the things you wanted to do, but now that you have 
done them, we take off our hats. That was the thing to 
do, it did not hurt us a bit; it just put us on a normal 
footing; it took away suspicion from our business.' New 
Jersey, having taken the cold plunge, cries out to the 
rest of the states, ' Come on in ! The water's fine ! ' I 
wonder whether these men who are controlling the United 
States realize how they are creating every year a thick- 



234. SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

ening atmosphere of suspicion^ in which presently they 
will find that business cannot breathe ? " 

There you have the democratic view. Only bring 
things out into the light! Publish income and tax 
statistics! It is not the actual injustice that the 
people mind ; it is that they are not acquainted with 
the fact of the existence of injustice. This is not 
different in kind from the competition idealized by 
the German historians and philosophers. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

They preach realism of a very gross sort! 

Carl Mardinburg 
How much grosser than the realism practiced by 
the Entente diplomats, who have been deliberately 
stifling the legitimate desires of the Germans for 
colonies? The French militarists used the influence 
of the English and Russian governments to frighten 
Germany into acquiescence in the designs of French 
capitalists on Morocco. 

Alexis 
You German and Austrian Socialists should have 
known that the English are not all Milners, nor the 
French all militarists ! 

Carl Mardinburg 

But all the French and English and Russians who 

counted were capitalists ; it was our capitalists that 

they were attempting to defeat, to be sure: these 

are all facts ! But how else could you expect our 



WHOLE CLOTH 235 

Socialists to express their fact than first to help our 
capitalism conquer the other capitalisms, and then 
to conquer it! 

Frank Plaistead 
But you so-called German Democrats never saw 
the fact of the United States. We offered you a 
court of international justice where you might stand 
and plead your case. 

Carl Mardinburg 
We did see the " fact " of the United States, we 
came to see it as a fact auxiliary to the English- 
French fact. You Americans refused to keep court. 
This was because you also had a System, which was 
disturbed by the split in the European System. 
Since the war with Spain, your capitalists have aimed 
at the expansion of their democracy into something 
— like imperialism ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Something like the Athenian hegemony of the 
Americans ! Cuba, Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, and 
Mexico are to form a Delian Confederacy for the 
United States ! 

AlJEXIS 

The great crime all these Nationalists commit is 
that they lay so much stress upon the superiority of 
the man of their own race, language and culture, to 
lead the procession! 



236 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

It*s more than that, Alexis ! The Nationalist not 
only says his countrymen are superior — but he also 
makes this an excuse to grab for his country what- 
ever may make it richer! 

The Bolshevik realism allows for startling differ- 
ences between the German and the American, between 
the Englishman and the Russian; but, at the same 
time, stresses the fact of unity, the common interests : 
it allows for the development of separate cultures, 
but it stresses the fact that great literature and 
great art are universal ; the great masterpieces are 
translated into every language. The Bolshevik prin- 
ciple of open diplomacy is an accounting of this sort 
of fact ; if one people knows what the honest claims 
and needs of another people are, misunderstandings 
will be cleared away, the real conflicts will emerge, 
and the just claims and needs of each people will 
be legitimatized in so far as the balance of interest 
for the world brotherhood permits. It is clear that 
if the Proletariat should come into power all over 
the world, war would become very unlikely: for the 
workmen everywhere would have identical interests 
and needs ; and the sufferings and losses on both 
sides in a war would be more apparently than now 
workmen's sufferings and losses. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
You speak of interests and needs of workmen 
so seriously, Teacher, it's positively funny. One of 



WHOLE CLOTH 237 

the first needs of workmen — even they — is money, 
capital, isn't it? 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Certainly! Let there be capital available to all 
the workmen on easy terms. What better means to 
provide for this than the nationalization of banks, 
a Bolshevik measure ! The Bolshevik aims to have a 
census of all the needs of the workmen, and then 
to meet them as expeditiously and as equitably as 
possible. 

Alexis 
And by " needs " you haven't in mind physical 
needs, alone ; bread and butter ! 

MiCHAIL SerGEIVITCH 

Of course not ! All the desires and fancies of men 
should be represented by an interest. Mind I do not 
specify that they be " normal," common, — democ- 
racy's regimen; I consider individual caprice just so 
much potential wealth; it has significance for our 
new political realist. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Libertinism 1 Saninel' How far do you go.? 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

So far as the individualist is not anti-social ! 

Judge Semyonov 
There is no doubt the libertine would readily 
enough accept your " new realism," as a good Bol- 



238 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

shevik! You, Pasha, as a pleasure-lover, would ac- 
cept it, if you already weren't in a position to enjoy 
privileges under the old system! 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
You may take me for a worthless fellow seeking 
my pleasure, but I and my kind are few. To tempt 
all the untrained rabble to fall into a like worth- 
lessness, as Michail Sergeivitch proposes, that is a 
serious matter. Restraining laws must be made by 
the aristocrats ; the people will never discipline them- 
selves. Think of the abomination of the Bolshevik 
divorce law. Why I understand that a man needn't 
be bound by his marriage vows any longer than the 
duration of the marriage ceremony, which is short 
enough now at the magistrate's office, God knows ! 
You can't tolerate sex laxity in the people. It will 
produce laxity in every other sphere of life. The 
Bolshevik removes the restraint of the church, he 
removes the restraint of the law, and now he removes 
the restraint of conjugal and family duties. Your 
ordinary man of the street, tasting such liberties, 
will go to the devil in a short time! 

Michail Sergeivitch 
Perhaps you really believe that a man restrains 
his passions only when opposed by an iron law. 
We do not observe you and your pals observing any 
law in these matters: you enjoy pleasure by night, 
and sleep by day; and drink and eat, always, even 
now! 



WHOLE CLOTH 239 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
We have no difficulty in getting our wine still. 
It is a Bolshevik we bribe ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Now you make fun of proletarian prohibition. 
You gentlemen will have your fling at every attempt 
at organized unselfishness ! You are convinced of 
the depravity of us all. You are not, yourselves, 
bound by custom, but you like to see others so bound ; 
indeed this subjection of theirs gives you with your 
super-morality, a sense of secret superiority. Ac- 
cordingly, you lay stress on sex rectitude : those who 
depart from the code — to which you and your fel- 
lows pay homage only in name — for howsoever a 
relative good, receive the stinging blows of your 
whips. You talk much of sex. You read the liter- 
ature which exploits it. You are reticent at one 
time that you may be prurient at another. And 
so when Bolshevism comes, menacing your whole 
sacro-cryptic attitude on sex matters, you rise up 
in all the tattered and half-broken majesty of your 
class self-righteousness against this arch-treason to 
the old sanctities; you declare that you will con- 
vict the Proletarian movement of sex-heterodoxy; 
and you imagine that this is to give the movement 
its " knock-out blow." 

Frank Plaistead 
But, my dear Professor, just to unmask prudery 
and hypocrisy, you would not have us throw to the 
winds all decencies, and the regularities which the 



240 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

accumulated wisdom of the race has shown to be a 
physiological necessity. The irregularities of the 
rich may be reprehensible, but, certainly, you will 
not carry your craze for social equality so far as 
to plunge the big mass of common people into excess 
and debauchery by permitting them the same free- 
dom I Your radicals in all history run to Free 
Love. Sensuality takes the place of religion with 
them ; they worship the Beast ! And the Bolsheviks 
show the weakness of true radicals in this respect as 
in others. 

Alexis 
With what debauchery can you charge the Bol- 
sheviks? You have witnessed ten months of the rule 
of the Proletariat. Have you seen excesses, have 
you seen drunkenness, have you heard of a reign of 
debauchery.? 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Now don't try to paint your hooligan friends as 
angels, Alexis. I was in Petrograd the first night of 
the revolution. I heard how the soldiers burst into 
the Winter Palace, stole the jewels and gold, and 
how several were found the next morning floating, 
drowned, in pools of wine in the wine cellar ! 

BUKTSEV, THE WaITER 

If one wished to tell scandal of the Winter Palace, 
Pasha, one needn't begin at the first night of the 
revolution! You are not the only witness of the 
first days of the revolution. You would throw dirt 



WHOLE CLOTH 241 

on the whole idealism of the Russian people during 
that mad first-taste of freedom. You dare not 
charge that the mass of us conducted ourselves in a 
reckless way. You might recall the watchword of 
those days that passed from mouth to mouth among 
us : " Be sober, be worthy of freedom ! " You know 
that the soldiers who did disgrace the people's honor 
were savagely attacked. 

Frank Plaistead 
But this state "of the people's Puritanism did not 
last long! Human nature is human nature 1 The 
Bolsheviks got tired of their own lofty idealism, and 
now each man of them strikes out for himself. I 
know one commissar in this city who has nearly 
enough money scraped together to go away with. 
How is it that your Bolshevik justifies riding, him- 
self, in first-class railroad wagons, occupying the 
logia at the theatres, monopolizing the automobiles 
of the city, requisitioning for himself the finest resi- 
dences ! 

BURTSEV, THE WaITER 

The devil ! I don't see why a Bolshevik shouldn't 
ride in a first-class wagon, if he chooses to spend his 
money on that particular comfort. And as for the 
fine houses — in which any one family would get 
lost, I should think — if they are not suitable for 
schools or hospitals, then why shouldn't the com- 
missars have the luck of living in them; and have 
automobiles, too ; you wouldn't destroy these fine 
things, would you ! All the fine buildings, the lovely 



242 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

church towers and monasteries at a distance, the big 
factories, brilliantly lighted in the late afternoons of 
winter, the furs and jewels of women, — all these 
things we fellows like ; we do not destroy them ! We 
look long at such beautiful pictures as Chastleevy 
paints; it is only the portraits marked with the 
imperial arms that we destroy ! — Well ! I must 
hurry away to wait on Misha and Pavel, the two 
sailor boys over there; they want their fourth ice- 
cream; it is a habit with them to eat four of an 
evening ; and if they pay for them, why shouldn't they 
have them! 

(Btjrtsev hurries away to wait on the 
sailors.) 

Judge Semyonov 
Burifsev is your idealist from below ! We all know 
what a thoroughly good chap he is, and what a 
sensible one, too ! The Russian Proletariat, if repre- 
sented by such men as he, instead of by the irrespon- 
sible extremists that now have their party in hand, 
wouldn't be so bad, you know! True enough, since 
the revolution, the masses have attacked those who 
were caught in drunken brawling, or looting, or in 
any other act of taking advantage of popular rule. 
Such is a people's idealism! It is fine to think that 
at heart the common people know what is decent, 
what is fit to keep, what is fit to throw away ! We 
intelligentsia may rely on them to support the right 
measures — indeed, we shall need their support, if 
the right is to triumph. Moreover, I think they 



WHOLE CLOTH 243 

may be able to settle the great problems of industry, 
themselves ; for it is their own problem, after all, isn't 
it! 

When I was in London last, a friend, a Labor 
member of parliament, took me to see " The City," 
the old part of London. The most interesting sight 
to me was The Guildhall. Hanging from its time- 
darkened rafters were the lively colored banners of 
the carpenters, the masons, the shoemakers, the silver- 
masters, the bankers ! I was thrilled ! I pictured 
in my mind some larger hall where representatives 
of all a nation's labor might meet — where the real 
muscle and brain of the people might speak direct 
— that this should be the nation's governing body ! 

Frank Plaistead 
Thrilling indeed! But too idealistic! 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Syndicalism ! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 

It seems a shame to me that good Russians like 
the Judge and the Teacher, who fight for the same 
general principles, should quarrel over details of 
policy. What Judge Semyonov has just now said, 
sounds to me like an argument for a government by 
workmen; what more Bolshevism than this can the 
Teacher desire? 

Alexis 

This little difference between the positions of the 
Social-Revolutionary and the Bolshevik, Chastleevy, 



244 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

may become great enough, ultimately, to divide the 
whole nation into two camps, and you and I will 
have to choose with which crowd we shall cast our 
lot. The Social-Revolutionaries, being the right 
party of the only two strong parties in the country, 
attract many of the conservatives into a coalition 
with them ; they are patronized by the non-socialist 
elements, and will be persuaded that it is only polite 
to repay them with a compromise. 

Judge Semyonov 

Yes, there is a difference between us. We Social- 
Revolutionaries get along with other people ; we 
recognize that there are " other people " to get 
along with. The Bolsheviks entirely ignore certain 
parts of the public, certain interests of all Russia 
together. The Bolshevik workman of course shouts 
and waves his cap for Bolshevism — Bolshevism puts 
his interest above all other interests. On the other 
hand, it is not so patently for the interest of in- 
tellectuals like the Teacher and Alexis to support a 
rule by the working class — unless just for the 
distinction of being humanitarian and " advanced " ; 
these few choice souls are simply idealists, men to 
spin theories, to write books which may keep us men 
of affairs in mind of ultimate goals. Their only 
mistake is to try to associate themselves with poli- 
tics, with the dirty, tiresome, everyday struggle to 
make the crowd move on, — to cajole, to teach, to 
compel it ! 

I never draw my conclusions as to the merit of any 



WHOLE CLOTH 245 

public measure by the number of idealists supporting 
it. An idealist is a good roan who judges everybody 
by himself. Now Burtsev here is a good Bolshevik; 
he thinks all his fellows are just as honest and un- 
selfish as he himself. If all the citizens were like 
Burtsev we shouldn't need any laws at all. Ninety 
per cent, of them are not; they have to be watched 
and hemmed in by the law and its guardians. I have 
not been a lawyer for nothing. Many highly re- 
spected citizens come to me to be advised just how 
honest it is necessary to be to come within the law; 
they dodge taxes on principle ! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

You make a fine devil's advocate, Judge ! They 
do say that honesty is found only among primitive 
and uncivilized peoples such as the Chinese and the 
Lapps. At any rate, we can vouch for the absolute 
honesty of Russia's old peasantry. Much of the 
dishonesty of the civilized Western peoples, in my 
opinion, is traceable to the bad customs of an eco- 
nomic system which in many respects resembles a 
gambling table. Even so, gamblers will play the 
game according to their own rules. Business men 
and lawyers have their own codes. And generally 
men will keep faith where they are trusted to do so. 
At the university a few years ago some of the pro- 
fessors, including me, decided to put men upon their 
honor not to cheat in our own examinations, and, 
since then, I believe that in our examinations the 
cheating has been the least. I know you will say that 



246 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

because I am only a good man and an idealist, my 
support of Bolshevism can count neither for, nor 
against, it. Or, again, Burtsev is a Bolshevik, and 
yet, you admit a sensible fellow ;, so you put down his 
fault as idealism, he doesn't understand human na- 
ture! I am wearied with these arguments ad 
hominem. Why must we reason about principles 
wholly on the basis of personalities? What should 
it be for or against Bolshevism, that among the 
Bolsheviks are found liars, thieves, opportunists, 
churchmen, longshoremen, or idealists? Have you 
not idealists among the Social-Revolutionaries? 
What is an idealist, anyway ? Isn't every man some- 
what of an idealist? If an idealist is the man who 
works out the principles of action, who reckons 
with philosophy ; if an idealist is the man in a move- 
ment who is there because a rationalist or religious, 
is the idealist negligible ? It is a common mistake to 
suppose, because the work of the idealist is from 
mind to mind, from suggestion to deliberate plan, 
and as slow as any growth, that he is ineiFective. 
But it may be just as well that this mistake persists: 
it gives the idealist an unsuspected leverage over his 
opponent. 

Alexis 
Can't one say. Teacher, that the idealist will be 
in great demand by the new political realism ! These 
" facts," these truths of the human relationships — 
can they not best be observed by the type of mind 
peculiar to the idealist, — keen, imaginative, un- 
trammeled by precedent or prejudice? 



WHOLE CLOTH 247 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Most assuredly Bolshevism has need of idealists ! 
The greatest " facts " for the Bolshevik must be 
human love and human faith ; the old system, though 
it had Christianity for a foster mother, lost sight 
of them; the new reahsm, they must stare in the 
face ! Government, itself, is by faith ; it is marvel- 
ous to what subtle social laws men will react. The 
idealist you will generally find is a man of faith, him- 
self; he believes that love and faith are in human 
nature; he plans and acts with reference to these 
subtle, social laws that bind men. It is he, I think, 
who takes the natural course; and when artificial 
and unspiritual systems, codes, and governments de- 
velop, it is he who must call people back to the right 
course. The leaders of Bolshevism must be men of 
faith: Bolshevism is founded on the mutual trust of 
workmen, individually and collectively. 

For lack of faith in their ideals, many well-inten- 
tioned, half-Bolshevik gentlemen of the Bourgeoisie 
fail to advance — to use a word which the Judge 
just now used ironically. They would like to join 
hands with the Bolsheviks ; they assent to the prin- 
ciples of Bolshevism; but they stop on the edge of 
the stream and will not jump in. Good menl is it 
that you do not trust brothers of a different bring- 
ing-up ; that you are deterred by class-pride ; that 
you hesitate to sell all and give to the poor, and 
think : " What will become of me without my clean 
linen, my private library, and the background of re- 
finement for friendship ! " Alas ! that you cannot 



248 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

see that all these things would be added unto you, in 
counterpart, or, yea, even in greater measure, by 
an act of faith on your part. 

The Bolshevik can accomplish marvels : he believes ! 
Fantastic, misplaced, unquestioning, impatient be- 
lief, maybe ; nevertheless, it is pounding and surging, 
ceaselessly, on and on, out of the depths of the ocean 
of humanity. Like a tidal wave Bolshevism will 
carry along with it the masses of mankind; there is 
the inevitability of social evolution in it. For these 
new social ideas, once they really have a hold on the 
masses, will be the first dictates to action, no matter 
how reasonable or unreasonable ; they will gain the 
victory complete; they will reign potently as the 
religion of the masses. 

Meantime, the Bourgeoisie become fatalistically 
inert. They refuse to believe that the people can 
do anything without their leadership ; they forget 
the fecundity of the people to produce their own 
leaders when it needs them. In the English Rebellion 
of the seventeenth century and in the French Revo- 
lution, the people completely renounced its old lead- 
ers. Let our Russian Bourgeoisie — the clean 
scribes and Pharisees who write clever books and 
make pungent speeches — scornfully count, if they 
will, the day till their return to power; they may be 
sure that this present scornful self-importance of 
theirs is the only importance they will ever have ! 
They are the old surface that covered the mouth of 
a crater; they are now the buried ones, buried be- 



WHOLE CLOTH 249 

neath tons of burning lava that still flows straight 
from the very bowels of mankind. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Sansculottism ! Hail Carlyle of the Russian 
Revolution ! 

MiCHAIL SeKGEIVITCH 

The ideas of Bolshevism are working in the masses 
over the wide world like yeast ! The war-lords con- 
tribute from their money-bags to stop the menace. 
They use the censor, the prison, and their echoing 
press. They fail to see that these are weapons of 
putty pitted against sharpest steel. It is unbelief 
pitted against belief ! Just as it was at the time of 
the French Revolution ! What though the Girondins 
had the best of the argument ! They had learned 
to argue out of books and in my lady's parlor! 
But the Mountain was a yeasty place. There blood 
was thick. There Faith was not scant! The be- 
lievers were sweaty and hot-hearted. They were 
moved from within, they knew not the working of 
the mystery. And something great and strong, 
born out of their belief, has endured down to the 
present generation, and now in its maturity, impreg- 
nated by a faith even more virile, has brought forth 
our Bolshevik Revolution. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
And like the French Revolution, it will usher in 
a reaction, some such dictator as Napoleon. It is 
of quick growth, and it will have a quick death. 



250 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

AUEXIS 

Of course if you will look superstitiously to the 
past ; if you will find in history only cycles — 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
And why should this revolution be more perma- 
nent than others? 

A1.EXIS 
Because this is 1900 and not 1800. Because the 
modern industrial workers are more intelligent and 
possess greater solidarity than the peasants and 
detached workmen of the past. Because this Revolu- 
tion is a product of a war and its camp fields like 
nothing of the past. Understanding is being bred 
there. And strong feeling, too ! These present rev- 
olutions will endure because they rest on the strong 
feelings of the masses ; it is religion with them. 
They have been bankrupt in religion too long. Now 
at last they may discard a religion of sticks and 
stones, of crosses and icons, of theologies made ex 
cathedra out of the childish metaphysics of Syrian, 
Egyptian and decadent Greek, mystics and sophists 
— a medicine man's religion. The cumbersome old 
religion is being dismantled along with the arma- 
ments. Its charm is ceasing to work any longer. 
The new religion, which is replacing it, contains the 
germs of a genuine brotherhood: military force will 
only a little longer bid the workmen come and go; 
soon they will stir only when moved by a sense of 
duty inculcated by this new religion. The old re- 



WHOLE CLOTH 251 

ligion divided men. The new religion must unite 
them; it must be catholic and international! 

Frank Piaistead 
We've outgrown Catholicism ; that's absence of 
thought. As soon as your workmen begin to think, 
there will be divisions in the church of the Prole- 
tariat. As now you have Orthodox, old believers. 
Baptists, and Atheists ; so then there will be single- 
taxers, three-hour-a-day men, the skilled tradesmen, 
the syndicalists! 

Alexis 
The sect-phase has no place in the new religion! 
In many of our Russian churches one sees painted 
the seven councils of the church. Each council is 
represented as a trial scene. In the center is the 
Emperor ; on his right hand sit the men of God with 
halos above their heads ; on his left, sit the heretics, 
a black, defiant, interesting lot. So men have been 
declared right or wrong according to the decrees of 
the greatest hairsplitters. This is typical of the 
old religion as it is of the old political partisanship. 
In the future men will disagree in politics and in 
religion, but it must be as to real interests, and the 
interests of the Catholic brotherhood must always 
predominate. 

Frank Plaistead 
It is very easy for young chaps like you to talk 
of the old and the new, as if the world grew up only 
with them. With you and your fellow-revolution- 



252 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

aries, even God is out of date. You are aU atheists 
or agnostics, I'll warrant. Now, confess, Gospadeen 
Alexis Zolodeen, do you believe in God.^ 

Alexis 
If we wish our dialogue of this evening to get any- 
where, you must excuse me just now from any elab- 
oration of my idea of God. But I need not spar 
with you: I may honestly say I do not believe in 
the God of Christianity. The war has been the 
greatest piece of atheism in all history: it puts out 
of countenance the God Christians worship. It 
denies that there is a God of men ; it allows only for 
a God of the kings and leaders of people. The ruler 
of one people hurls his anathemas at another people 
in the name of God. But such a Divinity, called 
upon for victory and propitiated with the blood of 
hundreds of thousands of victims, cannot be a God 
of men, a God of human hearts. This God, the God 
of the war-lords, seems to me as hollow, as dead, as 
unresponsive to the prayer of a heated man as that 
Moloch of the Isarelites, compounded out of the gold 
and silver of an itching fleshliness. This God seems 
to approve of men according to the country they 
live in, or the amount of property they possess. The 
Bolshevik speaks in the name of no such empty tribal 
God ; he speaks for no national church ; he builds up 
no philanthropic institutions at the dictation of a 
property-holding class. 

Frank Plaistead 
You have gone far enough, young man ! One can 



WHOLE CLOTH 253 

readily see that socialism and religion are all one to 
you. You overlook the fact that the Christian God 
you so lightly dismiss has prevailed during all these 
twenty centuries of civilized man on earth! 

Alexis 
The Bourbons reigned long, and the Romanoffs 
long, during all the years of civilized Russia. But 
when the last Czar's crown fell, with it fell that ven- 
eration for the crown-bearer wliich was supposed to 
be ineradicably planted in the Russian people: they 
were ready for something purer and truer to ven- 
erate. The Christian God has also been thought to 
stand absolute and fixed forever, with certain perma- 
nent qualities, among the European peoples. But 
with the advent of a new religion of the people, such 
a God, an improved Israelitish Javeh, is cast into 
the lumber-room where the socially outworn and 
vestigial usages of the race lie, forgotten by all 
except the scholars and romancers. The God of the 
new religion must not be an old man contemplating 
what fine thing he has done ; but live and growing, a 
young God, strong and beautiful and passionate — 
to direct us as we go on with him creating a better 
world ! Look, look ! here comes the beggar's girl 
again, to-night. Her singing is of the new religion ! 
{There has approached a Beggar, a sturdy 
old fellow with staff in hand, accompanied hy 
a young girl. The girl sings in front of the 
cafe. She is liJce some fresh wild thing from 
the country! Not sweet; rather her manner 



254» SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

is tragic and heyond her years. She is 
mysteriously detached from her singing, her 
mind seems not to he in the park at all. Yet 
she captivates those who listen in the thick 
circle already crowded around her. The 
young men are fascinated not only hy her 
voice, but by her figure, as well: for, as she 
sings, she dances, wildly tossing her arms. 
Her long black hair is beautiful! These men 
who are held spell-bound by her have, to use 
the common expression, " gone to the 
gypsies.^'' After the singing the old man 
passes the hat. He comes upon the veranda 
and to the corner table.) 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Tell us, father, is yonder girl who has fascinated 
us with her singing, your granddaughter, or other 
relative of yours? 

The Beggar 
She is my granddaughter, Nasty a, my son Vassili's 
girl. Do you enjoy her singing? 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Very much! I have not enjoyed singing so much 
in a long time I Have you been walking the way of 
the world long, father? 

The Beggar 
You seem interested in me, sir ! Would you really 
like to hear my story ? 



WHOLE CLOTH 255 

Several 
Yes ! Tell us about yourself I 

The Beggar 

I have not always been a beggar; I was a beggar 
when I was young, and I am one now that I am old, 
but for twenty years I was a landholder. My father 
was a serf on the estate of Nicolai Vladimirivitch 
Tyzenbak, twenty versts from Nishni. I did not 
like the plowing and sowing and reaping on the 
estate. When I was in the fields I would feel very 
lonely and very far from God. The City seemed to 
me a happier place and so to the city I came. Is 
it not strange that I should so dislike the country, 
having lived there myself as a boy, while Nastya, my 
granddaughter here, she prays to live in the country ? 
She is always dreaming of being a peasant's wife! 
Well! When I came to the city I found that very 
much I loved to be on the streets where always are 
many people passing and it is merry, and so I became 
a walker of the world. I chose to stand all day 
near the holy shrine of Saint Sergei. Many happy 
years I spent so. I married. 

Then the people who make our laws at the city of 
Saint Petersburg made a new law, under which, so 
my friends in the country informed me, I received a 
share in some land on the Tyzenbak estate which 
had fallen to our family. It made me proud to be 
a landholder, and that day I heard of this I burned 
a large candle at the shrine of Saint Sergei. I re- 
turned to the country and remained ten years, but 



256 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

all that time I longed very much to be back on the 
city streets. So I let Pavel Ivanovitch take my 
small strip of land and pay me rent out of every 
harvest. On this rent and the profits from selling 
little articles at the bazaar, I made a living for my- 
self and my orphaned granddaughter, Nastya. 
Then came the present Czars to rule in the city of 
Saint Petersburg, and they made new laws and took 
away my land in the country, because, as they said, 
I was only a landholder ; I did not plow and sow 
and reap myself, but took rent from the harvest. So 
now I have to walk the world again, for I cannot 
make enough roubles at my little stall in the bazaar 
to keep myself and Nastya, my granddaughter, 
when the price of bread is more than five roubles a 
pound. 

Judge Semyonov 
Michail Sergeivitch, here you find another peasant 
who hates the Bolsheviks ! You know, father, of 
course, that it is the Bolsheviks who have done you 
this injury! 

Guest at Adjoining Table 
Father, beware of the counter-revolutionaries who 
take a sudden interest in your welfare 1 The Bol- 
sheviks will drop money into your hat as often as 
any people. 

A Second Guest 
(A companion to the first.) Don't deceive the old 
man, Theodor! The Bolsheviks are going to keep 
beggars off the streets — in the public interest ! 



WHOLE CLOTH 257 

The Beggar 
I know little about Czars, gentlemen ! God gave 
me the land in the country and now God has taken it 
away! I thank you for your kindness, gentlemen. 
God bless you! 

{The Beggar rejoins his granddaughter, 
and they both move on.) 

Pasha, the Gentleman 

This man of your people, Alexis, seems not yet to 
understand that God and the Czar are socially 
vestigial ! 

Alexis 

The old man does not understand, but the girl 
who sang, will. Last night I heard her singing some 
revolutionary songs to a large crowd; she wasn't 
singing for money only ! Her singing is a piece 
with Mordkin's dance of the Italian Beggar, which 
we saw him do when he was here on his last Volga 
tour. The Great Revolution is all there. First the 
beggar is represented as dejected, as without idea, 
as unawakened. Then bursts upon his mind his 
real occasion to feel proud and glad, and, waving 
his red scarf, he dances with abandon, he dances out 
the happiness in him ! 

Chastt.eevy, the Artist 
He spends the riches of himself ! 

Alexis 
Yes, he spends of himself ! Did you ever experi- 
ence the discovery of a depthless mine of gold all 



258 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSLV 

■witliin yourself: finer and purer than pure gold, 
usable, ine5;haustible ! It is a mad discovery! To 
sing, to dance, to make something beautiful, that is 
tlie only way to express one's unutterable joy! 
These revolutionaries are expressing themselves, good 
or bad, in Bolslievism. To tlie people in Europe 
who read of it, it may appear sUly : but to us who 
witness it — to me, it is very human ! alive ! and 
freshly bom ! it expresses what before had been only 
a hope and a belief ! It is like djincing and singing I 
Mordkin expresses its exaltation! The beggar's 
granddaughter expresses its freshness and wildness, 
its strength and its weakness I 

Chastt.kf.vy, thz Aktist 
Alexis, you, yourself, express tlie Revolution! 
Through you, I see something I did not know was in 
Bolshevism before. You speak as a poet about it ; 
your speech is alive and freshly born! 

Alexis 

I speak as I myself feel it. Before it came, I 
only know how many times I felt dejected ; how con- 
tinually I felt hampered and repressed by those re- 
ligious and cultural norms which seem to rest hghtly 
enough on others, but are. to me, intolerable, because 
in direct opposition to what tells me in my own heart 
is beautiful and true. Perhaps what tells me in my 
heart of these beautiful and true things, is God. 
But it is too awfuUy human. I think: it cannot be 
a deity : it is so much a part of me ; it seems like hav- 



WHOLE CXOTH 259 

ing somewhere, safe and always accessible, the fresh- 
est, most fragrant and altogether lovely Spring 
Garden where I may walk and feel absolutely free ; 
feel first one thing, and then another — I feel that 
I am an exquisite rose, a bluebird flying through the 
air, the last notes of some short theme of 
Tschaichovsky ! And so I have good feelings, which 
my Divinity approves, when I hear this beggar girl 
sing ; when I see Mordkin dance ; when I visit Chast- 
leevy's studio and watch him paint, and hear him 
talk about his work as if no one ever before painted 
an^'thing quite so fine ! Also, when I listen to The 
Teacher: he is a real teacher who every day sees 
some new thing the like of which was never before, 
but before was something a little less, something a 
little less significant ; he sees in what plain soldiers 
and shoemakers do and declare remarkable evidences 
of his theories ; and all his theories are so simple and 
tentative; what he holds to-day he may enlarge, 
diminish or wholly dismiss, to-morrow. 

And in the same way I like these Bolsheviks im- 
measurably weU ; I cannot tell why ; but that within 
me which is continually telling what to like, tells me 
the Bolshe'viks are interesting! So I watch them. 
And, as it is the way usually, what I watch and study 
I take into my heart. When I see the Red Guards 
marching, and when I read in the bulletins that they 
are meeting with success, I am elated. I hang 
around the parks where they are holding festivals, 
and I stop and watch their " praetorian guards " 
dash down the streets in the automobiles that they 



260 SKETCHEiS OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

have taken from the Bourgeoisie, and I smile; and 
when the man beside me says " what rascals ! " I 
repeat " what rascals ! " but I have a different mean- 
ing; it is of no use to explain to him the difference 
of meaning, for then we should discuss and discuss, 
and he would describe many foul Bolshevik deeds and 
many foul Bolshevik men. 

All the same, I find myself secretly wishing to be 
a Bolshevik ! I wonder, should I have my wish, 
should I still have my Spring garden to walk out 
into ! Of late, I become more and more convinced 
that there is only one way to keep always within 
walking distance of that garden, and that is to seek 
unfalteringly such master-joys as I find: joy in the 
singing girl, in the man like Mordkin possessed with 
some mad conceit, in active minds like Chastleevy's 
or the Teacher's. So I shall continue not to be 
ashamed to rejoice when the Red Guards go by, and 
to think as well of the new rulers as it is possible. 
And I shall continue to believe that the Great Revo- 
lution has something to do with the greater happi- 
ness I have enj oyed since it happened : I feel decidedly 
less hampered and repressed! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

It is the poet of us who has been speaking ! 

Frank Plaistead 

Perhaps so ! That may explain why I have not 

understood perfectl}^ I never was strong on poetry 

— gardens. Spring, the bluebird's last notes, and so 

on! I do not understand this heart-acceleration of 



WHOLE CLOTH 261 

Alexis at his " Great Revolution '* ; I must confess I 
can't see anything poetical about dirty revolution- 
aries. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 

Just read Shelley, Plaistead ! " Prometheus Un- 
bound " ! 

Frank Plaistead 

Prometheus and Shelley may be good Bolsheviks 
for all I know; I do not pretend to be acquainted 
with the leaders of such movements. But, damn it ! 
I can't see why your first revolution — the March 
Revolution — wasn't poetic and " great " enough to 
give play to all the exuberance of you excitable 
Russians ! 

MiCHAIL SeUGEIVITCH 

We Russians are not excited about Mediocrities ! 
There is no exuberance, except that of comedy, about 
a sham revolution. The blind ones, the self-involved 
intellectuals, those slow of heart — to them the 
March Revolution was just right; neither too hot 
nor too cold, served up in a dish neither too large 
nor too small! The Bourgeoisie wanted their own 
little revolution, of course. The Capitalist plays 
the revolutionary game : he is out for the same ob- 
jects apparently as the true revolutionary; only 
when he gets near the goal he will never put the ball 
over. 

Judge Semyonov 

How can you pretend, Michail Sergeivitch, that 
the March Revolution was conducted by capitalists ! 
We Social-Revolutionaries were behind it. Who are 



262 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

the true revolutionaries, time and intelligent Russia 
will decide. We Social-Revolutionaries offer the 
same promises to Russia as you; and we are more 
likely to fulfill them. For we educated people con- 
trol the agencies of the Past, we have the key to the 
treasury of the Past. Tell me, learned Teacher, how 
can a people live, one with the other, without law ! 
Law is evolutionary ; the law of to-morrow must be 
based on the law of to-day. Your Bolsheviks are 
anarchists : they recognize neither time nor measure ; 
they only destroy, they cannot replace. They rend 
the temple of the law and there is among them no 
master who can rebuild it. 

MiCHAlL SerGEIVITCH 

Rend the temple of the law! That temple is al- 
ready crumbling. The great modernists of the law, 
the sociological jurists, have long been undermining 
it, doing to the law what the higher critics did to 
theology. Let me carry the analogy between law 
and theology still further! I have heard you say. 
Judge, that the church is but a shell ; that its theol- 
ogy is based on an error, made at the Council of 
Nicea, and that since then the trinitarian dogma has 
led the churchmen a merry chase through number- 
less tomfooleries. And when the hierarchy of the old 
Russian church was overthrown a year ago and the 
radical priests were set up in power and donned the 
brilliant robes and the bishops' miters, you declared 
in a burst of religious fervor : " Why such fuss over 
half changes; why not wholly clean the house of 



WHOLE CLOTH 263 

God at once and be done with mummery, the chanting 
of sonorous nonsense, the kissing of icons, and other 
parade and pageant of a sensual rehgion ! " Didn't 
you say something like this, Judge? 

Judge Sbmyonov 
I said all of that ! Mind, I'm not an atheist, but 
I am out of all patience with the archaism of our 
Russian church. 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

No less, Judge, am I out of all patience with the 
archaism of our law. I think the law is an empty 
shell; that the prevailing property-right theories 
of recent court decisions are based on an error ; that 
the law got on the wrong track, was forced into the 
service of powerful commercial interests ; that the 
early law like the early church was communistic; 
that it was the whole body of society that at first had 
the sole rights; private rights came later. 

Judge Semyonov 
And you would have law retrocede to that point 
where private rights began 1 

MlCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Certainly not! The Bolshevik is the more, not 
the less, an individualist ! There will be more law, 
not less, when the present bulky, wasteful, take-if- 
you-can, hit-or-miss system is supplanted. But, 
first. Judge, before we have more law, we must have 
less: we must indeed rend your temple of the law, 



264 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

already topheavy ! This body of law must perish, 
together with the System, alongside which, and in 
support of wliich, it has been built. For law shares 
the guilt of its partner; it wears the same ugly, 
grotesque face! We shall have to go back to na- 
tural law — just as we go back to natural 
religion! You admit we cannot piece out the 
old religion. Well ! there is no more reason in evolu- 
tion to graft the new law on the old than to graft 
the new religion on the old. New wine, you remem- 
ber, friend, requires new bottles I 

Judge, Semyonov 
But how in the world do you make out that there 
will be more law under Bolshevism.'' 

MiCHAIL, SeRGEIVITCH 

More law because of more competing interests ! 
The inauguration of social equality will not produce 
the simplification you expect: when the conflict be- 
tween the classes ceases, then, promptly, disinte- 
gration, horizontally, according to the thousand and 
one real interests of men, begins. The area and in- 
tensity of conflict subject to court jurisdiction will 
be increased: to meet the greater demand on it, the 
machinery of the law must become more elastic, and 
cognizant of finer discriminations. Do not fear. 
Judge, that the legal mind will want for exercise; 
on the contrary, a legal mind, which is not quick, 
original and flexible, will be valueless I 



WHOLE CLOTH 265 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Trust these Bolsheviks to invent new laws ! Look 
at any one of their flaming news-sheets i One-half, 
orders and decrees ! There are more Soviets in the 
city than inhabitants ! There is a commissar for 
dogs ! There is to be one for the park pigeons ! 
And some crazy night-shirter proposes one for styles 
of dress ! Everything is by card or permit. You 
are correct, Teacher : the Bolshevik will multiply the 
laws — so much so, that there will not be freedom, 
even to die, without permit! I protest I prefer by 
far those happy lawless days under the easy-going 
administration of such public robbers as you and 
your legal fraternity. Judge! 

Judge Semyonov 
My fraternity would starve, Pasha, if it hadn't 
yours to feed upon ! — Teacher, after all, you seem 
to give us lawyers no small place in your Proletariat 
state! You trace well the probable course of de- 
velopment of the law; only, if anything, you over- 
rate the importance of the law in the society of the 
future. I should like to see less law ; my idea is that 
law is but a makeshift for natural justice. Law 
holds people to what they ought to do unbidden. It 
prevents the giving of free rein to wanton desire 
and strength. It is the lack of law that explains the 
present anarchy. Your Proletariat has free rein; 
see what injustice prevails! Law is codified disci- 
pline. Tell me, Teacher, how do the Bolsheviks pro- 
pose to maintain personal and public discipline.? 



266 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Frank Piaistead 
That is a point which I think, also, is of major 
importance. Discipline is absolutely necessary, if 
a people keeps its own respect and gets business 
done ! And will you pardon me a criticism of the 
Russians — remember I wish to speak cautiously, 
as always when I criticize Russia ; of course, I really 
don't know her yet ! — but it seems to me that the 
Russians as a people are very much lacking in disci- 
pline. This fact explains many of their weaknesses ; 
though, perhaps it should be added, it accounts for 
some of their charms. 

Pasha, the Gentueman 
Ah! we have explained to us now, Mr. America, 
wherein lies the charm for you of our Russian women, 
from whom you choose your wife! 

(Burtsev brings in a tray of bottles for 
the corner table. He stands at the shoulder 
of Chastleevy; drinks half a glass of beer 
from Chastleevy's bottle.) 

Carl Mardinburg 
Lack of discipline is the vulnerable point in Bolshe- 
vism. Principle is one thing; method and results, 
another. We Austrian Social Democrats are pretty 
close to Bolshevist principles, but we stick to win- 
ning methods. We shall be the dictators of Austria 
after the war. It is by our inflexible discipline that 
we shall in time break the back of the parties to the 
right of us. The Bolsheviks trust to the miracles 



WHOLE CLOTH 267 

of faith, or to poetry — they speak finely like this 
young gentleman, meanwhile allowing their army to 
die of dry rot : they remove the death-penalty ; they 
remove all officers, I don't say their army isn't 
brave! It's so eager that it fires ofl^ all its shells 
before the Czechs are within striking distance — and 
then has to run. But, at last, Trotsky and his staff 
recognize the point of weakness in their army: now 
they are looking about for men with officers' train- 
ing. They have found me for one man; to-morrow 
I go down to the Kazan front for them. 

Alexis 
In the service of the Fatherland.? 

Carl Mardinbttrg 
It may ultimately serve the Socialist Austria that 
is to be after the war! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

The American and the Austrian seem to answer 
the question about Bolshevik discipline as they ask 
it. The disciplined Americans and Germans are de- 
termined, first of all, to get something done. The 
Bolsheviks are not much concerned to get something 
done as to decide what shall be done. They are less 
concerned, yes I am sure they are less concerned — 
how efficient an army they have, than what they 
have an army for. Discipline consists first of a 
body of rules and customs, and, second, of the en- 
forcement of these. The Bolshevik accepts this 
definition. But, first, he insists that the rules and 



268 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

customs agree with the principles of the Bolshevik 
Brotherhood, and second, that they be observed in 
the Bolshevik spirit. The spirit of Bolshevik disci- 
pline is the development, expression, and government 
of self: it is self -discipline. It is the act of those 
who know their own will. Autocratic or democratic 
armies may conquer the whole world, and yet have 
no purpose of their own, accepting discipline for 
its own sake. 

Carl Mardinburg 
Whatever its discipline, the Red Army lost Sam- 
ara, Simbirsk, and Kazan. 

BURTSEV, THE WAITER 

(Stands between Chastileevy and Judge Semy- 
ONov. Has been intent on the conversation; his 
head hanging out over his body.) The Red Army 
will march back over Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara. 
It is becoming stronger with every day, despite the 
stories circulated by the Contra-Revolutionaries that 
the Czechs are only, now a hundred, now fifty versts 
from Nishni. Batteries are beginning to arrive 
from the factories ; the Petrograd, Moscow, and 
Smolensk workmen delegations are already at the 
front ! {Shrieking whistles are heard below on the 
river. One boat after another takes up the long- 
drawn-out, blood-curdling cry. ) There go our army 
boats now to the front ; with more contingents, prob- 
ably! These workmen make for us something we 
can be proud of — an army of the Proletariat. We 
conscript from our own ranks, in our own interest! 



WHOLE CLOTH 269 

This Red Army of ours is new; it Iras hardly had 
the time to make for itself those new rules and cus- 
toms of which the Teacher speaks, but, never fear; 
we discipline ourselves, we shaU find what rules we 
need. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
The people will go on looking for their self-gov- 
ernment till eternity, and, meanwhile, their rules and 
customs are violence, insolent bullying, and the " red 
claw " ! Indeed, the silly people hold the scepter ; 
right is their own caprice ; they who should feel the 
rod now thrash their betters with it, hit or miss. 
Their dictators, insolent jackanapes, meet in secret 
cabinet, and tell off to die somewhere in the dark, 
the brave men who provoke their resentment, not 
even allowing them the honor of riding publicly to 
their gallows in a tumbril! 

Alexis 
Three-quarters of the " violence " and the " red 
claw " is the product of your own jolly imagination, 
Pasha! Many Bolsheviks who were down and are 
now up, demand some sacrifice to their vengeance. 
Many make the power of office a brutal tyranny. 
Many, with more eagerness than good sense, plunge 
headlong into random suspicion and hatred of 
bourgeois men and women, and refuse to reckon them 
fellow-citizens, candidates for the Proletariat on 
trial. Of these false or over-eager ones, we who 
hate bloodshed that is not honest, are ashamed. 
But it is few that are bloody ! I have seen the face 



270 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

of the president of one committee against contra- 
revolution ; I looked into it to discover what the face 
of an executioner might be like ; but what I saw in 
the face was a soft heart, a very soft heart ! 

It is too much to expect that a clean-sweeping 
revolution should be without hurt or pain — as 
harmless as acting on a New Year's resolution ! But 
in the future we may look for cooler judgment among 
the Bolsheviks ; there will come their rules and cus- 
toms ; already one may see them acquiring habits : 
the Soviet system is getting its feet ! The strong 
leaders are restraining the impulsive ones. There 
must be no Terror ! Those revolting deliberate cruel- 
ties which are found in all parts of the world touched 
by the scourge of this war, must cease here; they 
give our panting enemies the material they want for 
creating a " Russian Terror." 

Carl Mardinbueg 
Youngster, you find order in disorder, judgment 
in children, rules in anarchy ! 

Alexis 
It's of no use to argue ! You refuse to see how 
good can come out of boisterous, dramatic, young 
Humanity, as, stung by the bitter lessons of the war, 
it renews the struggle to know truth, and makes a 
right-about-face turn to get upon another road. 
To me, it is remarkable that at crucial periods, when 
masses of men feel and act upon the strength of 
quick collective thought, new forms and new leaders 



WHOLE CLOTH 271 

rise ready to hand, as if nature herself has prepared 
for the emergency ! I never read the story of the 
French people in their revolutionary crisis without 
fresh wonder, and every day is renewed my wonder 
at the spontaneous governments which have arisen 
in communist Russia. In each village was bom a 
republic overnight. At first each local Soviet is 
like a monarch, sovereign in its own realm ; all things 
seem to be in confusion. Your gentleman who thinks 
only in terms of large conglomerations of humanity, 
who derives satisf g,ction in having people lumped and 
tagged and centralized under a crown or a constitu- 
tion, is quite put out by such a complex of auton- 
omies as Russia presents to-day. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
These centrifugal tendencies of Bolshevism are 
pure Russian. The Russian is an individualist. 
Our German, and our American, friend here find 
much to condemn in Bolshevism. Much of this they 
condemn is Russian character. We Russians were 
never intended for empire. We love our local liber- 
ties. Like the ancient Greeks, we should be content 
with city states. And the Bolsheviks really feel a 
respect for the insubordination of small units. 
When I was in Kazan a few weeks ago, I saw several 
Tartar regiments, and in the course of business I 
met a Tartar commissar. Perhaps it should have 
hurt my pride to see this downtrodden race, up- 
standing! My pride was touched; but only for 
them, not against them! 



272 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Man From the Crowd Beside the Veranda 
Ha ! the Tartars have Kazan by the throat 1 It's 
only by means of Tartar mercenaries that the Jew- 
ish commissars keep control of the city. The Tar- 
tars have forced the commissars to remove the Rus- 
sian Cross from the top of the tower built in the 
Kazan Kremlin to commemorate the Russian con- 
quest of the Tartars in the sixteenth century, and 
to put in its place the Moslem Crescent ! 

A Tartar 
Why shouldn't we have some rights ! W^e're a 
good third of the city of Kazan. 

A Jew 

Yes, why shouldn't we subjugated races have some 
rights ! Give to us a chance, and we will prove 
ourselves to be but the better servants to our Russian 
over-lords ! 

Man From the Crowd 
Give you Jews a chance, servile swine, you'd soon 
have all the rest of us your debtors J 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Wait till after the Bolsheviks go ! and you'll see 
the most thorough pogrom Russia ever knew. 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
For shame ! For shame. Pasha ! 

The Jew 
Man of hate ! a pink rag rouses the bull in you. 



WHOLE CLOTH 273 

You believe in nothing but flesh and bones ; flesh and 
bones, classified, perfumed and painted. Sweating 
flesh, flesh not well-tailored — Jewish, or Tartar, or 
Armenian flesh, you turn up your nose at! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 

You're well hit, Pasha ! It is a hopeful thing 
about these Bolsheviks that they intend giving the 
poor despised races a share in the government. In 
this I believe the Bolsheviks are quite Russian. 
They are not stingy with their liberties ; as were, for 
example, the Hungarians, with what Kossuth won 
for them. 

Frank Plaistead 

The Bolsheviks are generous enough, God knows ! 
They are parceling out the country to the menial 
classes here and there, leaving Russia's patriots a 
long task later to recover them. Praise your Greek 
city states, if you will, but, at the same time, recall, 
will you please, your history a little further on, to 
wise Alexander! The Bolsheviks not only have 
allowed Finland, the Baltic Provinces, the Ukraine, 
and Crimea, to break away; their own territory is 
in a hundred pieces, which they can't even keep all 
Bolshevik; there is no central control! 

Michail Sergeivitch 
But there will come central control! That like 
the new discipline — its rules and customs — will 
come as Bolshevik institutions settle. For a parallel 
of decentralization, I would refer you, Mr. America, 
to your own history. For several years after your 



274 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

freedom from the mother country was won, there 
continued such a struggle of leaders, and parties, 
and states, that we find on record how gravely the 
founders of your nation despaired of arriving at any 
national unity. And further was it not over the 
right of states to secede that your Civil War, the 
most bloody war in modern times till this, was 
fought ? 

Frank Plaistead 
You Russians know American history damn well! 
But some of you put on it absurd interpretations. 
You refuse to see it as a record of adventures in 
just government; just but sane. We have never 
danced the reel of extravagant radicalisms ; at least, 
where innovations have been thrust upon us by inter- 
mittent demogogy, they have been checked by courts, 
subsequent legislation, or disuse. All the same, we 
have our ideals, as our outstanding leaders have 
from time to time conceived and framed them. We 
are not to be judged by the grasping, visionless 
politicians that as often as not represent us. Judge 
us by our best, by those who impersonate our durable 
and traditional hardheadedness and idealism; just at 
present, by Woodrow Wilson. In him you find your 
disciplinarian with a vision ; your humanitarian with 
a sense of graded values. I didn't vote for him ; I'm 
a Republican; but that's neither here nor there! 
Will you be fair enough to accept him, as I do, as 
our present spokesman.? 



WHOLE CLOTH 275 

MiCHAlL SeRGEIVITCH 

Wilson is a writer and an educator ; he is the first 
intellectual, strictly speaking, in your presidential 
succession; an intellectual of sterner stuff than our 
Russian type generally is, and all the more intract- 
able in such errors of the intellectual as he may 
run to. He has a well-considered, a well-seasoned, 
his very own conception of democracy, neither more 
nor less. He sincerely wishes to see this conception 
of democracy sway the world's convocation for 
peade. And for installing his ideas of national 
rights, he has in mind very definite changes to be 
made, especially on the part of his enemies. 

Wilson champions the cause of a league of demo- 
cratic nations. But does he acknowledge that, fun- 
damentally, the league .must be a federation of the 
workmen of the world? Does he appreciate the fact 
that before the war the workmen were the sole inter- 
nationalists, and already had an " international " 
after their own fashion.'' Or does Wilson seek merely 
to improve the care with which the big brothers 
watch over the little ones, the big brothers being the 
right-minded brothers of the right-minded nations ; 
the brotherhood being exercised, for the brothers, 
not through them. 

Chastleevy, the Aetist 
Just as Kerensky, so you tell me, would have 
Bolshevism come for the people, but not through 
them! 



276 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

Frank Plaistead 
You are clever, Professor! You are a regular 
Bolshevik ! Your suspicions and prejudices will not 
permit you to see things as they are. You think 
that all the while Wilson speaks eloquently he has 
something up his sleeve ! You see only his mailed 
fist, you do not see the genuine humanity of the man. 
You say we Americans do not mean what we said 
when we came into the war; but the rest of Europe 
has at last come to see that we are an idealistic peo- 
ple ; that we are not everlastingly with an eye to the 
almighty dollar. Whatever Europe may think, we 
are in an enviable position. We not only have 
ideals ; we have the power to enforce them ; we hold 
the key to the world situation. We have become 
the richest and the strongest nation ; our allies will 
reckon with us, the enemy leaders already refer to 
us, as such. This being so, we shan't have to shout 
ourselves hoarse to be heard at the peace conference. 
We have not gone about, and into war, without 
knowing what we were doing: we are a practical 
people. Our industry, our whole population — all 
classes — is united and organized to win this war ! 

Carl Mardinbtjrg 
You mean your grand bourgeoisie is united ! 

Frank Piaistead 
Don't tell me what I mean! and don't use the 
word " bourgeois," or any derivative thereof, in re- 
ferring to America ! I said all classes. The Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor, surely representative of 



WHOLE CLOTH 277 

our working classes, is working solidly behind the 
war administration. We shall attend to our internal 
problems after the war: we attend to one thing at 
a time. If you Russians had waited till after the 
war before attempting to clean your own house, you 
would not now be bereft of the world's sympathy. 
As it is, you have no honor among the nations, you 
have gained internal famine and disorder, you con- 
tribute Bolshevism and so but add to the dangers 
already facing the brave men who fight for justice 
among the nations. 

Moreover, you will find you have prejudiced good 
radicalism, setting back the rational progress of 
Socialism in Europe a hundred years. Mr. Pro- 
fessor, you and Alexis have been straining facts 
and your own good sense here to-night, to make 
out a case for Bolshevism ; but surely this is be- 
cause you do not understand the drift of your 
theories. I have listened patiently, trying to see 
if there mightn't be after all something in a move- 
ment that undoubtedly has the support of some 
good men, idealists or intellectuals. You ridicule 
the Russian intellectual; I agree he is a pitifully 
inconsequential fellow; well, what are the Bolshevik 
leaders themselves if not intellectuals merely ; stupid, 
impractical and unbalanced, a millstone around the 
neck of the true Russian people. Personally these 
men may be irreproachable, even delightful. 

Do not think I do not respect you, Professor — in 
fact, I think I would admire you if you cast your 
lot with the lower classes ; I believe your sympathy 



278 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

with them is genuine enough: we all hereafter must 
face more squarely the problems of the poor; we 
must do away with poverty. But I feel you only 
theorize, Professor ; you are not in truth a Bolshevik. 
If you are, it matters little; you will be able to 
repent soon, before you have compromised your- 
self: for the ogre of Bolshevism hurries off the scene 
as quickly as it came on; it is only evanescent! 
You Bolshevik-minded folks only talk in thin air. 
If, when I get home, I think over this discussion, it 
will seem like the stuff of dreams, as insubstantial as 
the smoke of our cigarettes ; and I shall have to 
pinch myself to realize that I have been conversing 
here with live men! 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

Perhaps you have not been " conversing " with 
us. Perhaps your mind has been turning nothing 
over as we talked; at any rate, it did not meet 
ours ! Perhaps it was your mind you should have 
pinched as you sat here. Men are alive, are real, to 
you, perhaps, only when they move, physically ! 

Perhaps physical polity is all you see in the 
state! You boast of the richest and most powerful 
nation ; rich in material things, strong in the equip- 
ment of war. Indeed you Americans are at the top, 
at the pinnacle of capitalism. Your capitalists shout 
" democracy " with the loudest : as much money can 
be made in a democracy as under some other kind 
of government. Your leaders will not compromise 
with the German System to-day. To-morrow will 



WHOLE CLOTH 279 

they compromise with the American System; will 
they allow it to remain the powerful autocracy it is ; 
will they curb your own cotton, coal, and iron kings ; 
will they stay the imperial expansion of your own 
materialism? Will they admit where their real 
wealth and power lie? Or will they continue to 
think of the producers of your wealth as only one 
part of it, as something to enter in the table of 
statistics with the other resources, as problems of 
poverty? Indeed, men like you, Mr. America, de- 
clare your concern for labor ; you talk about welfare 
committees and labor policy boards : for you know 
The System stands on labor; you know that all the 
wealth, all the power, you boast of, is in your putty 
feet; tons of human energy there; nothing unreal, 
nothing thin, there ! After not many years, you'll 
not have to pinch yourselves to realize how live it is, 
either ! 

You have given Bolshevism a challenge ! You will 
make it evanescent by saying it is so. It is a blow in 
your face ; if successful, it would suck out all matter 
for your pride : and so you deny it ; it cannot be, it 
is not strong ; you call it names ; you delineate its 
horrors ; your leaders summon the nations of the 
world to protest its terrorism in Russia. Terror- 
ism? That which it suits you to call "terrorism" 
is created, in part, by your own swift failing upon 
our land and population ; in part, by the exaggera- 
tion and misrepresentation of your censored and 
well-disciplined press ; but for the most part it is a 
delusion, arising out of your own stupefaction at 



280 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

seeing somewhere the " democracy " which you have 
so much in your mouths, actualized ! We accept the 
challenge ! We scorn your stagy protests ! we scorn 
the insolence of your new-mihtarists, we scorn the 
grossness of your riches. For we know how these 
riches have been piled up by enslaving your masses, 
your putty feet! We know how you keep them 
menial, how you develop them into the patriots you 
need: by playing upon their grosser passions and 
prejudices, by feeding them with lies from your regi- 
mented, bourgeois jpress; pulpit, and platform ! 

You come among us boasting of these enlightened 
and liberty-loving menials, and bringing messages 
in their name. You come here as we are passing 
through the glory of free Russia at white heat, and 
our order is only chaos to you, our words are 
empty ; you listen to our repudiated Bourgeoisie that 
alone of us all you associate with, for their words 
sound familiar ; but to the birth-cries of big pregnant 
Russia you stop your ears, as to something obscene. 
You say we are idle, we do not do things as you. 
God be praised we don't ! Keep to yourself your 
activities, your huge businesses, your uncanny 
eflBciency. If these things make men blind, if they 
m^ke men deaf, keep them to yourself ; we have native 
ignorance abounding with us; we do not want ma- 
chines brought in that will create more. 

Finally, you come against us with your armies, 
and with the cunning little men of Japan; all the 
capitalisms send a quota for the expedition: the 
cause interests capitalism everywhere! You bring 



WHOLE CLOTH 281 

us food and — oh 1 you will do all sorts of things for 
us, for the Russians whom you would make trustees 
over the rest of us ! To these right Russians you 
express sorrow that you must come ; you say it is 
necessary as a militar}'^ measure against your enemies 
— Germany's reason for trespassing on Belgium. 
Rot ! If to-morrow Germany succumbs, you will 
nevertheless stay on under some pretext, your high 
duty to this or that, your mandate to establish 
right and justice! But we listen no longer to your 
words ! We fight ! We are not pacifists. We fight 
so well you call us Germans. Starvation is one of 
your weapons. Well, then, we will starve ! 

There must be freemen in America and in England 
who feel it a shame to starve brave workmen, and 
to invade their young republic. These we will have 
as our friends in your own arsenals, and call them 
what dirty names you like, they will accomplish more 
for us and the common cause than you can imagine. 
You retort that we have our enemies at home in 
Russia, you will say we are not Russia : we are of 
the city, the peasants hate us ; we are soldiers ; we 
are poor. Indeed there are many Russians who 
hate us ; we have been too uncompromising ! They 
hate us as much as you do, and for the same reasons. 
You thought, at any rate you said, that our enemies 
were in a majority, and that once your bright ban- 
ners were planted on our shores, there would flock 
to them countless thousands. Some have gone over 
to you for bread, and, are with you the elite, those 
few who had the money to flee to London or Paris 



282 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

— they, mind you, are your really denationalized 
people, in their investments and in their pleasures! 
But the Russians who count, you drive to us. 
You make Bolshevism national, Russian. And why 
are we less patriotic than your bourgeois fugitives? 
Do we not love homeland as much as they? Is not 
Russia holy to us? Are not her broad plains, her 
busy rivers, her rich language, holy to us? Ah, but 
we are more than Russian — that is our fault. We 
fight for more than Russia, you say ! It was in the 
name of the world proletariat we struck down Rus- 
sian capitalism. Yes, and we are strong from that 
struggle ; we are desperate, too ; for we have tasted 
blood. We have become maddened with fire; by its 
light we have seen, off not too far in the distance, a 
better way of living! And this fresh strength of 
ours, this madness, this vision, is not, as you know 
only too well, for holy Russia alone, not alone for 
her broad plains, for her busy rivers, for her mighty 
populations; rather, it is dedicated to Brother 
Workmen everywhere. And so from everywhere we 
expect, we shall have, great increase to our ranks. 
Ours is the force of a raging fire which cannot be 
confined. You may stop it once, you may stop it 
twice ; but once engendered, it will not stay quenched. 
Stamp it out in Russia, and it will flare up at your 
own feet on another continent ! 

{The challenge of Michail Sergeivitch 
strikes the men dumb! It is getting late, and 
most of the promenaders have already left 
the park. Over on a hack path the Beggar's 



WHOLE CLOTH 283 

grandchild can be heard singing the Russian 
" Marseillaise "; some soldiers in another 
part of the park have taken up the refrain. 
Chastleevy and Burtsev, who, all his other 
customers having departed, had now taken 
a seat at the corner table, sing with gusto the 
last lines.) 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
You sing, Chastleevy, like a Bolshevik — with a 
cracked voice! 

Chastleevy, the Artist 
Never mind, I do sing; that's something besides 
laughing, which is all you do. You may make fun 
of the singing of Bolsheviks; I admire them for it; 
especially, if it is true, as they say, that they sing, 
victorious or defeated. 

Burtsev, the Waiter 
They can sing when defeated, because they know 
they are going to win in the end ; nothing can stop the 
soldiers of the Proletariat! Cover your Counter- 
Revolutionary soldiers with medals, increase their 
pay, fill them with liquor, demonize them with every 
engine of hell ; our fire shaU consume their fire ! Our 
comrades are mad, if you like. They fight to finish a 
work just begun. Workingmen come from the north, 
workingmen come from the south, as the brave six 
hundred marched on foot from Marseilles to Paris, 
car-iraing! They march without trappings, with- 
out the brilliant uniforms of officers. No wines or 



284 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

sweet chocolate in their equipment ! Our comfort- 
able ofEcer-enemies seem to have a great deal of the 
bright, convenient, and satisfying things which we 
Bolshevik Russians find very attractive; nevertheless 
they are not going to buy us with the old promises 
of easier lives, nor with ships of food and money. 
The liquor they offer us as bribes we will hurl into 
the gutters, where we emptied our own liquor in those 
first mad days of the Revolution, No, they are not 
going to buy us with what they think is all we care 
for ! Nor are they going to deceive us again to take 
service as Swiss guards for the palaces and royal 
grounds they live in! 

Judge Semyonov 
Burtsev seems to know his French Revolution ! 

Frank Plaistead 
Probably even he knows American history — oh, 
you clever Russians 1 

MiCHAIL SeEGEIVITCH 

Burtsev has explained Bolshevik self -discipline bet- 
ter than I did. 

Pasha, the Gentleman 
Discipline ! The new Puritanism ! The new state 
of the Naked Truth, sans God, sans law, sans food, 
sans good clothing, sans all the good things ! There 
will be no more wine, nothing the well-bom may drink 
to distinguish them from the hoi polloi! It will be 
a drab existence we live, reduced to a bleared level! 



WHOLE CLOTH 285 

MiCHAIL SeRGEIVITCH 

It will not be Puritanism, nor Syndicalism, nor 
Socialism, nor Anarchism, nor Libertinism, nor any 
other sport movement, cult or tendency which you 
disbelievers can cry out at and smother by derision. 
It may be level for you: it will perform no jigs, cut 
no capers, nor afford you any amusement. Doubt- 
less, it will be distressfully level, a vast plain stretch- 
ing endlessly, where roams every living creature, 
where grows every green thing, where the rivers are 
black with happy commerce ! It will not be a French 
Revolution. That was but a symptom, but a sick- 
ness that frightened the Bourgeoisie. Of this revolu- 
tion there will be no Carlyle that will presume to 
write a history. Historians do not write of Deu- 
calion and Pyrrha: they are an epic subject. With 
the coming of Bolshevism is an end to the periods of 
primitive man ; the developed man will look back upon 
the kings and rulers of his youth as at the best onl}'^ 
heroes with serious limitations ; he will know the ape 
in his line of ancestry; and he will not be ashamed, 
neither will he take pride in it. It had to be ! 

Bolshevism comes in the twentieth century ; now 
we see it only in its infancy — formless, without clear 
meaning. It will be no lovely thing, and there will 
be no hypocrites flourishing to make it appear so. 
It comes as the war itself — unprecedented, of un- 
believable proportions, cruel, sucking out more of 
human energy than ever there seemed to be. But its 
cruelty will not be, like that of the war, simianesque- 
burlesque. It will be the cruelty of the irrevocable, 



286 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

of the " done-f or ! " Not a punishment for foolish- 
ness but its annihilation. If the industrial revolu- 
tion of a century ago was cruel, this revolution will 
be murderous. It will displace ; without proposition, 
it will dispose! Many who were first shall be last, 
and many who were last shall be first ! It will not be 
Utopia, Happiness Unmitigated ! It will be a crass 
thing, out of struggles, bitterness and woe com- 
pounded ; and the woe of the dreamers of Utopias, of 
worlds without pain, will be very great 1 Bolshevism 
brings not peace but a sharp sword. It is not 
Pacifism — Pacifism is a step beyond ; Bolshevism 
only clears the way for many such expressions of 
man's best spirits, of his high instinct for getting by 
losing. 

For, indeed, after the first freedom, the easiest, the 
narrow freedom to be as good as any animal in the 
pack, is obtained, then are just made possible the 
richer wider freedoms : the freedom to be worked hard 
by one's natural interests and so to taste the deliri- 
ousness, the misery, of self-f orgetfulness ; the freedom 
to sing out one's heart, by mad song and dance to be 
saved and healed; and, finally, the freedom of the 
mind. When by the light of the new realism men see 
what blind creatures they may be, they will under- 
stand that they must be, not reformed, but informed. 
They will seek to know beauty and truth. They will 
teach their children to think. 

{The Teacher rises -from the table. As he stands 
looking out over the hill, he observes signs of a brew- 
ing storm. The river is turbulent; her boats are 



WHOLE CLOTH 287 

chafing at anchor, their moving lights -flash. The 
moon is riding fast from under a heavy blacic cloud 
and casting a ghostly light. The trees in the parJc 
are lashed by the wind. A strong gust blows a chair 
from the cafe veranda into the middle of the path.) 
But men do not wait to think ! In heavy times they 
move by passion and instinct. They always will! 
We Bolsheviks will leave to history our reasons. 
We do not fear to ack quickly as we must! 

Alexis 
The wind bloweth as it listeth! 

(The ex-soldier at the coat-racTc helps 
MicHAiL Sergeivitch On with his coat.) 
I will walk home with you, Teacher! 

(MicHAiL. Sergeivitch and Alexis shake 
hands all rou/nd, and depart together.) 

Carl Mardinburg 
The Herr Professor seems to be a thorough Bol- 
shevik. Is he active in the party? 

Judge Semyonov 
No. Some of the Nishni Bolsheviks wanted to 
make him commissar of education, but the majority 
wouldn't listen to it. Could anything show better 
the absurdity of the Teacher's theories ! And he has 
been most eloquently and most cleverly explaining 
to us how there would come those from the educated 
classes into Bolshevism. Ha ! he, himself, will come 
knocking on the door in vain ! 



288 SKETCHES OF SOVIET RUSSIA 

BURTSEV, THE WaITER 

{As he and the ex-soldier-at-the-coat-rach are 'put- 
ting up the shutters of the cafe and closing it for the 
night.) Perhaps he will! But all the fine spirited 
men like him everywhere will not. For the sake of 
ten men good and true like him, we Bolsheviks will 
spare tens of thousands of you scoffers — you with 
your gratified pride, you who will come to any state 
but that of humility: who refuse to reckon with the 
possibility that you may do badly or think badly ! 
Michail Sergeivitch and Alexis, and you, Chastleevy, 
are humble. You ask nothing from us Bolsheviks. 
You may get recognition or you may not ; it doesn't 
matter ! Men like you are answers to the best argu- 
ments they may put up against us. God made you 
honest hearts ; He will make others ; and in that we 
Bolsheviks will try to give Him some assistance! 

{The men at the corner table, the only 
guests left in the cafe, take up their hats 
and file down tlie cafe steps. Rain is begin- 
ning to fall. A flash of lightning for a mo- 
ment brightens the whole park and reveals 
seven figures, coat collars turned up, hurry- 
ing along tJie path, and passing a stiff monu- 
ment to Count Zolodeen, grandfather of 
Alexis, a brave general in a past war.) 



THE END 



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